532
PARTISAN REVIEW
We have explored three factors in Dostoevski's complex person-
, ality, one quantitative and two qualitative: his extraordinary degree
of affectivity, the perverse impulsive structure which inevitably marked
him out ·as a sado-masochist or a criminal, and his unanalysable artistic
endowment. This combination might very well exist without a
neurosis; in fact, there are no neurotic complete masochists. But, ac–
cording to the balance of forces between the impulse claims and the
inhibitions opposing them
(plus
the available methods of sublimation),
Dostoevski would still have to be classified as a so-called "impulsive
character." But the position is obscured by the presence of the neurosis,
which as I have already said, is not in the circumstances indispensable,
but which comes into being all the more readily, the richer the com–
plexity which has to be controlled by the ego. For the neurosis is only
a sign that the ego has not succeeded in making a synthesis, that it
ha~
forfeited its harmony in making the attempt.
How then does the neurosis in the strict sense show itself? Dos–
toevski called himself an epileptic and was accepted as such by. other
people, on the strength of his serious attacks, which were accompanied
by loss of consciousness, muscular convulsions, and subsequent depres–
sion. Now it is highly probable that this so-called e ile s was only
a symptom of his neurosis, and must, accordingly, be classifie
hystero-epilepsy, that is, as serious
hysteri~.
We cannot be com–
pletely certain on this point for two reasons, first, because the medical
data on Dostoevski's "epilepsy" are defective and untrustworthy,
and secondly, because our understanding of morbid conditions com–
bined with epileptiform attacks
is
imperfect.
To take the second point first. It is unnecessary to reproduce here
the entire pathology of epilepsy; it ·would serve no useful purpose.
But this may be said. The old
morbus sacer
is still in evidence as an
ostensible clinical entity, the mysterious disease with its incalculable,
apparently unprovoked convulsive seizures, its changing of the charac–
ter into irritability and aggressiveness, and the progressive decline of
all the mental faculties. But in the last resort this picture flickers and
becomes blurred. The seizures, the onset of which is savage, accom–
panied by biting of the tongue and incontinence of urine, working up
to the dangerous
status epilepticus,
may, however, be reduced to brief
periods of absence, mere transient loss of consciousness, and may be
replaced by short periods in which the patient, under the control of
the unconscious, does something foreign to his character. Although
otherwise conditioned by purely physical causes in a way we do not
understand, the first appearance of the attacks may be due to some
purely psychical influence (fright), or, further, they may react to
