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The intellectual tradition of the western world to a large extent stems from Greek philosophy, and the Dialogues of Plato represent perhaps man's first major effort in dialectical thinking about the individual in society and in the cosmos. The writings of Plato may be regarded as the origin of intellectual communication, which we shall see is ambivalent in nature, expressing both competitive struggle and inspirational catharsis. The psychoanalytic interview is a type of intellectual dialogue which, like a Platonic dialogue, aims at a form of initiation or purification; indeed, we shall see that Plato's philosophy historically stemmed from tribal initiation ceremonies in early Greece.
It has long been recognized by scholars that much of the imagery in Plato's Dialogues stemmed from religious ideas and practices which existed in early Greek culture. Cornford suggested, for example, that the procession of images carried across the fire-lit cave in the Republic may have stemmed from the exhibition of mystic symbols in the darkness of the initiation ceremonies at Eleusis. (1) The image of the horses and charioteer in the Phaedrus seems also to have been borrowed from the Eleusinian mysteries as well as from Orphic and Pythagorean religious beliefs. (2) The number mysticism in Plato is of Pythagorean origin; and the central theme in Plato — the conversion of the guilty person through moral, intellectual, and emotional purification—has often been traced back to Orphism. Jane Harrison said:
“Plato's whole scheme alike of education and philosophy is but an attempted rationalization of the primitive mysticism of initiation, and most of all of that profound mysticism