ABSTRACT
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders could be described as providing a categorisation of madness in the service of treatment, treatment being directed to managing madness, frequently with the assistance of medication. In a psychoanalysis, by contrast that particular form of madness known as the transference, which serves the treatment. In the story Phaedrus, so-named but referred to in the third person as a character in the story, has memorised Lysias’ speech. He has done this only by having listened to Lysias repeat it several times and, finally in some desperation, by borrowing Lysias’ written scroll. In response Socrates says that the myth is in fact set at another place, one which is further downstream. He takes this as an opportunity to criticise those who interpret myths in order to make them conform to what is probable, wanting, for example, to “correct” the appearance of such impossible hybrid creatures as the Centaur and the Chimaera.
