Antiphon: Soothsayer, Sophist, and Logomageiros

“In all humans, indeed, thinking governs the body for health, sickness and the rest”, maintained Antiphon who, according many doxographers could “heal every suffering person by means of language”. This art of taking off sadness, which Antiphon practiced for a while in Corinth, his rhetorical activity afterward, and his opinion about divination (and, furthermore, about dream interpretation) are in direct relation with his disturbing philosophical thought. Their axe – the care about the structure of the interpretation, the emphasis on the fluidity and flexibility of language, and the performative character of words when enounced appropriately – shows us a very interesting affinity between Sophistic and Psychoanalysis.