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‘Is everyone mad?’ The depiction of mental disturbance in the work of Dostoyevsky
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Allan Beveridge
www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric-treatment/article/is-everyone-mad-the-depiction-of-mental-disturbance-in-the-work-of-dostoyevsky/93AA567E56C90363B561FCB6077AE6F8
Summary
This article examines how madness is depicted in the work of Dostoyevsky. It gives a brief account of Dostoyevsky's life before looking at the many ways in which he portrayed insanity. It suggests that he provided a sophisticated and complex picture of mental illness which has relevance for how contemporary clinicians conceive of psychiatric illness.
Man is an enigma. This enigma must be solved, and if you spend all your life at it, don't say you have wasted your time. (Dostoyevsky, quoted in Reference FrankFrank 1977: pp. 90–91)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the greatest writers in world literature. Nietzsche declared, with characteristic modesty: ‘Dostoyevsky was the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn’ (quoted in Reference GideGide 1967: title page). Albert Einstein claimed that Dostoyevsky gave him more than any other thinker by providing an inspirational glimpse into the relativism and instability of reality (Reference Leatherbarrow and LeatherbarrowLeatherbarrow 2002: p. 2). Reference Freud and StracheyFreud (1928) asserted: ‘Dostoyevsky's place is not far behind Shakespeare. The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written’. In Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, Walter Reference KaufmannKaufmann (1956) maintained that the Russian writer occupied a seminal role in the development of existential thought. Sartre was an admirer, while Camus drew on the insights of the Russian novelist in The Rebel (1951) and The Possessed (1959). R. D. Laing commented: ‘After D[ostoyevsky] one wonders whether philosophy is possible anymore’ (Reference LaingLaing 1952–53).
Dostoyevsky and his work should be of great interest to psychiatrists: he has, after all, been called ‘the Shakespeare of the asylum’ (Reference AppignanesiAppignanesi 2008). Even a cursory acquaintance with his novels reveals that many, if not most, of his characters teeter on the brink of mental instability. ‘Is everyone mad’, asks the narrator of A Raw Youth (first published 1875; Reference DostoyevskyDostoyevsky 1947 reprint: p. 65). Characters are afflicted by brain fever, they start to ramble and have a mad gleam in their eyes. They are offended by slights to their dignity. They become feverish and announce their personal philosophy of life. They talk about God and beauty. They make disturbing confessions and create scandalous scenes.
As well as the countless portrayals of insanity, there are descriptions of alcoholism, epilepsy, idiocy, sexual abuse, suicide, pathological gambling and personality disorder. Dostoyevsky took an interest in psychology and read contemporary writers on the subject. Indeed, he specifically discusses theories of madness, most memorably in the court scene in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), where various experts pontificate on the sanity or otherwise of Dmitri Karamazov. Dostoyevsky was wary that the theories of psychology could be used to absolve an individual of responsibility for their actions, and he recurrently poked fun at what he called ‘the psychologists’. Dostoyevsky was an avid reader of newspapers and was intrigued by the real-life stories of his fellow citizens. He sought out personal interviews with the subjects of news reports to find out more about their state of mind.
Little wonder that psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have been drawn to him. Freud conceded that he had not discovered the unconscious: the poets had discovered it long before him; and he singled Dostoyevsky out as the greatest writer of them all. Meredith Reference SkuraSkura (1981) argued that the poets had not only discovered the unconscious, they had also discovered psychoanalysis. More recently, Louis Reference BregerBreger (1989) argued that it is more fruitful to regard Dostoyevsky as a psychoanalytic colleague than as a subject of analysis.
Dostoyevsky's life is, however, of great psychological interest (Reference WellekWellek, 1962; Mochulusky, 1967; Reference FrankFrank 1977, Reference Frank1983, Reference Frank1986, Reference Frank1995, Reference Frank2002; Reference SirotkinaSirotkina 2002). His father, who was a doctor, died in mysterious circumstances and may even have been murdered by peasants. Freud made much of the alleged murder and maintained that Dostoyevsky's epilepsy was a hysterical manifestation of his supposed parricidal wishes. Dostoyevsky was arrested as a young man for being in a revolutionary political group, taken out to be executed, only to receive a last minute reprieve. He then spent several years in a labour camp. He was plagued with epilepsy throughout his adult life, and was subject to depression, episodes of paranoia and occasional hallucinations. He was also given to ruinous bouts of gambling. This article will briefly examine Dostoyevsky's life story, and then consider the many ways he depicted madness in his work.
Biographical sketch
Early years
Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 3 October 1821 in the Marinsky Hospital for the Poor, where his father worked as a doctor. Medicine was an honourable but not very lucrative occupation in 19th-century Russia and the family lived in cramped conditions in an apartment in the hospital grounds. Of all the great 19th-century Russian writers, Dostoyevsky was the only one not to come from the landed gentry. This is of crucial importance as it influenced how he viewed his position as a writer: he maintained that his knowledge of Russian society was much wider than that possessed by his upper-class peers (Reference FrankFrank 1977).
Dostoyevsky's mother Marya was warm, loving and affectionate. She was also cultured and very religious. His father Mikhail was a hard-working doctor devoted to his wife and family. Dostoyevsky's biographer Joseph Frank maintains that, contrary to some reports, Mikhail never beat his children. He was, however, irritable, irascible, exacting and prone to melancholia. He had bouts of unfounded suspicions of his wife's infidelity, and he watched over his servants ‘with a cranky surveillance characteristic of his attitude toward the world in general’ (Reference FrankFrank 1977: p. 17).
Parental loss and military education
Dostoyevsky was the second oldest of eight children. He spent the first 13 years of his life at home, going to boarding school in Moscow in 1834. When he was 16 his mother died. The following year, at the command of their father, he and his elder brother Mikhail enrolled in the St Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering. Neither of them wanted to be military engineers; instead literature was their abiding passion. Dostoyevsky's life in the Academy was grim, and he always looked back at the decision to send him there as a woeful mistake: it was a milieu dominated by physical violence, military harshness and iron discipline (Reference FrankFrank 1977).
In June 1839 Dostoyevsky's father died in mysterious circumstances on his estate at Darovoe, near Moscow. Some accounts suggest that he was murdered by his own peasants but biographers have not been able to confirm this. Certainly Freud was convinced that the father's death was murder and maintained that Dostoyevsky felt guilty because his unconscious Oedipal wishes were being made real. Reference FrankFrank (1977) agrees that he may well have felt guilty but suggests that there were other factors. First, Dostoyevsky had recently failed his examinations at the Academy and when his father received the news he suffered a minor stroke. Second, despite his father's straitened circumstances, Dostoyevsky repeatedly sent him letters asking for money. His father always gave him the money and, in fact, his last letter with cash enclosed arrived around the same time that Dostoyevsky would have heard that his father had died. Contrary to Freud's assertion that Dostoyevsky had his first epileptic fit shortly after hearing about the death of his father, he did not develop epilepsy until 7 years later. And as James Reference RiceRice (1985) has shown in a careful study of the writer's medical condition, Dostoyevsky's epilepsy was organic in origin, not hysterical.
Dostoyevsky graduated from the Military Academy in 1843 but resigned his commission the following year to devote himself to literature. In 1846 he published his first book, Poor Folk, to widespread acclaim. A second book, The Double, published in the same year, was not so well-received.
The consequences of political involvement
Dostoyevsky became involved with a radical political faction known as the Petrashevsky circle. As a result of this involvement, he was arrested in 1849 and imprisoned in St Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress, which prevented him from completing his novel, Netochka Nezvanova. Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death and a mock-execution was carried out. Awaiting his own execution, he said: ‘We shall be with Christ’. His companion, the atheist Speshnev retorted: ‘[We shall be] specks of dust’ (Reference Jones and LeatherbarrowJones 2002). This conflict between belief and unbelief was to deeply concern Dostoyevsky for the rest of his life.
The death sentence was commuted to labour in a Siberian camp and exile. He was later to write about his experiences in Notes from the House of the Dead (1862). It was a significant time for Dostoyevsky: he obtained first-hand experience of living with the peasant class, and he rediscovered his Christian faith. In 1854 hard labour ended and he was posted to Semipalatinsk as a common soldier. In 1857 he married Maria Isaeva, but she died 7 years later, in 1864. The same year also saw the death of his brother Mikhail, with whom he had been involved in literary publishing. Despite these bereavements, Dostoyevsky resumed his writing and published Notes from the Underground (1864), a key book in his oeuvre (Box 1).
Rest in Link.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Allan Beveridge
www.cambridge.org/core/journals/advances-in-psychiatric-treatment/article/is-everyone-mad-the-depiction-of-mental-disturbance-in-the-work-of-dostoyevsky/93AA567E56C90363B561FCB6077AE6F8
Summary
This article examines how madness is depicted in the work of Dostoyevsky. It gives a brief account of Dostoyevsky's life before looking at the many ways in which he portrayed insanity. It suggests that he provided a sophisticated and complex picture of mental illness which has relevance for how contemporary clinicians conceive of psychiatric illness.
Man is an enigma. This enigma must be solved, and if you spend all your life at it, don't say you have wasted your time. (Dostoyevsky, quoted in Reference FrankFrank 1977: pp. 90–91)
Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the greatest writers in world literature. Nietzsche declared, with characteristic modesty: ‘Dostoyevsky was the only psychologist from whom I had anything to learn’ (quoted in Reference GideGide 1967: title page). Albert Einstein claimed that Dostoyevsky gave him more than any other thinker by providing an inspirational glimpse into the relativism and instability of reality (Reference Leatherbarrow and LeatherbarrowLeatherbarrow 2002: p. 2). Reference Freud and StracheyFreud (1928) asserted: ‘Dostoyevsky's place is not far behind Shakespeare. The Brothers Karamazov is the most magnificent novel ever written’. In Existentialism from Dostoyevsky to Sartre, Walter Reference KaufmannKaufmann (1956) maintained that the Russian writer occupied a seminal role in the development of existential thought. Sartre was an admirer, while Camus drew on the insights of the Russian novelist in The Rebel (1951) and The Possessed (1959). R. D. Laing commented: ‘After D[ostoyevsky] one wonders whether philosophy is possible anymore’ (Reference LaingLaing 1952–53).
Dostoyevsky and his work should be of great interest to psychiatrists: he has, after all, been called ‘the Shakespeare of the asylum’ (Reference AppignanesiAppignanesi 2008). Even a cursory acquaintance with his novels reveals that many, if not most, of his characters teeter on the brink of mental instability. ‘Is everyone mad’, asks the narrator of A Raw Youth (first published 1875; Reference DostoyevskyDostoyevsky 1947 reprint: p. 65). Characters are afflicted by brain fever, they start to ramble and have a mad gleam in their eyes. They are offended by slights to their dignity. They become feverish and announce their personal philosophy of life. They talk about God and beauty. They make disturbing confessions and create scandalous scenes.
As well as the countless portrayals of insanity, there are descriptions of alcoholism, epilepsy, idiocy, sexual abuse, suicide, pathological gambling and personality disorder. Dostoyevsky took an interest in psychology and read contemporary writers on the subject. Indeed, he specifically discusses theories of madness, most memorably in the court scene in The Brothers Karamazov (1880), where various experts pontificate on the sanity or otherwise of Dmitri Karamazov. Dostoyevsky was wary that the theories of psychology could be used to absolve an individual of responsibility for their actions, and he recurrently poked fun at what he called ‘the psychologists’. Dostoyevsky was an avid reader of newspapers and was intrigued by the real-life stories of his fellow citizens. He sought out personal interviews with the subjects of news reports to find out more about their state of mind.
Little wonder that psychoanalysts and psychiatrists have been drawn to him. Freud conceded that he had not discovered the unconscious: the poets had discovered it long before him; and he singled Dostoyevsky out as the greatest writer of them all. Meredith Reference SkuraSkura (1981) argued that the poets had not only discovered the unconscious, they had also discovered psychoanalysis. More recently, Louis Reference BregerBreger (1989) argued that it is more fruitful to regard Dostoyevsky as a psychoanalytic colleague than as a subject of analysis.
Dostoyevsky's life is, however, of great psychological interest (Reference WellekWellek, 1962; Mochulusky, 1967; Reference FrankFrank 1977, Reference Frank1983, Reference Frank1986, Reference Frank1995, Reference Frank2002; Reference SirotkinaSirotkina 2002). His father, who was a doctor, died in mysterious circumstances and may even have been murdered by peasants. Freud made much of the alleged murder and maintained that Dostoyevsky's epilepsy was a hysterical manifestation of his supposed parricidal wishes. Dostoyevsky was arrested as a young man for being in a revolutionary political group, taken out to be executed, only to receive a last minute reprieve. He then spent several years in a labour camp. He was plagued with epilepsy throughout his adult life, and was subject to depression, episodes of paranoia and occasional hallucinations. He was also given to ruinous bouts of gambling. This article will briefly examine Dostoyevsky's life story, and then consider the many ways he depicted madness in his work.
Biographical sketch
Early years
Dostoyevsky was born in Moscow on 3 October 1821 in the Marinsky Hospital for the Poor, where his father worked as a doctor. Medicine was an honourable but not very lucrative occupation in 19th-century Russia and the family lived in cramped conditions in an apartment in the hospital grounds. Of all the great 19th-century Russian writers, Dostoyevsky was the only one not to come from the landed gentry. This is of crucial importance as it influenced how he viewed his position as a writer: he maintained that his knowledge of Russian society was much wider than that possessed by his upper-class peers (Reference FrankFrank 1977).
Dostoyevsky's mother Marya was warm, loving and affectionate. She was also cultured and very religious. His father Mikhail was a hard-working doctor devoted to his wife and family. Dostoyevsky's biographer Joseph Frank maintains that, contrary to some reports, Mikhail never beat his children. He was, however, irritable, irascible, exacting and prone to melancholia. He had bouts of unfounded suspicions of his wife's infidelity, and he watched over his servants ‘with a cranky surveillance characteristic of his attitude toward the world in general’ (Reference FrankFrank 1977: p. 17).
Parental loss and military education
Dostoyevsky was the second oldest of eight children. He spent the first 13 years of his life at home, going to boarding school in Moscow in 1834. When he was 16 his mother died. The following year, at the command of their father, he and his elder brother Mikhail enrolled in the St Petersburg Academy of Military Engineering. Neither of them wanted to be military engineers; instead literature was their abiding passion. Dostoyevsky's life in the Academy was grim, and he always looked back at the decision to send him there as a woeful mistake: it was a milieu dominated by physical violence, military harshness and iron discipline (Reference FrankFrank 1977).
In June 1839 Dostoyevsky's father died in mysterious circumstances on his estate at Darovoe, near Moscow. Some accounts suggest that he was murdered by his own peasants but biographers have not been able to confirm this. Certainly Freud was convinced that the father's death was murder and maintained that Dostoyevsky felt guilty because his unconscious Oedipal wishes were being made real. Reference FrankFrank (1977) agrees that he may well have felt guilty but suggests that there were other factors. First, Dostoyevsky had recently failed his examinations at the Academy and when his father received the news he suffered a minor stroke. Second, despite his father's straitened circumstances, Dostoyevsky repeatedly sent him letters asking for money. His father always gave him the money and, in fact, his last letter with cash enclosed arrived around the same time that Dostoyevsky would have heard that his father had died. Contrary to Freud's assertion that Dostoyevsky had his first epileptic fit shortly after hearing about the death of his father, he did not develop epilepsy until 7 years later. And as James Reference RiceRice (1985) has shown in a careful study of the writer's medical condition, Dostoyevsky's epilepsy was organic in origin, not hysterical.
Dostoyevsky graduated from the Military Academy in 1843 but resigned his commission the following year to devote himself to literature. In 1846 he published his first book, Poor Folk, to widespread acclaim. A second book, The Double, published in the same year, was not so well-received.
The consequences of political involvement
Dostoyevsky became involved with a radical political faction known as the Petrashevsky circle. As a result of this involvement, he was arrested in 1849 and imprisoned in St Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress, which prevented him from completing his novel, Netochka Nezvanova. Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death and a mock-execution was carried out. Awaiting his own execution, he said: ‘We shall be with Christ’. His companion, the atheist Speshnev retorted: ‘[We shall be] specks of dust’ (Reference Jones and LeatherbarrowJones 2002). This conflict between belief and unbelief was to deeply concern Dostoyevsky for the rest of his life.
The death sentence was commuted to labour in a Siberian camp and exile. He was later to write about his experiences in Notes from the House of the Dead (1862). It was a significant time for Dostoyevsky: he obtained first-hand experience of living with the peasant class, and he rediscovered his Christian faith. In 1854 hard labour ended and he was posted to Semipalatinsk as a common soldier. In 1857 he married Maria Isaeva, but she died 7 years later, in 1864. The same year also saw the death of his brother Mikhail, with whom he had been involved in literary publishing. Despite these bereavements, Dostoyevsky resumed his writing and published Notes from the Underground (1864), a key book in his oeuvre (Box 1).
Rest in Link.
