Ruby Blondell. "Where is Socrates on the 'Ladder of Love'?" Plato's Symposium: Issues in Interpretation and Reception. Harvard University Press: 2006. 147-78.
This paper provides an account of each step of the Symposium's "ladder of love" and assesses the degree to which Socrates may be considered to have occupied each of them, concluding that Plato places him on all the steps, not in an orderly sequence but in an impressionistic manner that frustrates our desire to pin Socrates down.