DOSTOEVSKI AND PARRICIDE
535
significance: they were brought on by the fear of death and con–
sisted of a lethargic somnolent condition. The disease first came upon
him as a boy in the form of a sudden groundless melancholy, "a
feeling," as he later told
his
friend Soloviev, "that I was going to die
on the spot, and this was actually followed by a state exactly similar
to real death...." His brother Andrei tells us that in his childhood
Fedor used to leave little notes about before he went to sleep; he
was afraid that he would fall into a deathlike sleep during the night
and begged that
his
burial should be postponed for five days.
(Dos–
tojewski am Roulette,
Introduction, page
Ix.)
We know the meaning and intention of such death seizures. They
signify identification with a dead person, either one who is really
dead, or one still alive whom one wishes dead. The latter case is the
more important. The attack has then the value of a punishment. You
("\,&'
have wished another person's death, you become that person and are
yourself dead. Psychoanalytic doctrine here makes the assertion that
this other person for a boy is usually the father; the hysterical attack is
thus a punishment for having wished for the death of a hated father.
EYricid · , according to a well-known conception, the chief and
primitive crime of humanity as well as of the individual_! It is in any
\
case the main source of the sense of guilt; we do not know if it
is
• •
the only one. Researches have not yet established the psychic origin
of guilt and the need for expiation. But it is not necessary for it to be
the only one. The psychological position is complicated and requires
explanation. The relation of the boy to the father is, as we say, an
"ambivalent" one (that is, composed of conflicting feelings of ten–
derness and hostility). In addition to the hate which wants to remove
the father as a rival, a measure of tenderness for him also exists as a
rule. Both attitudes of mind combine to produce identification with
the father: the boy wants to be in his father's place because he ad-
mires him and wants to be like him, and also because he wishes to
put him out of his way. This evolution now comes up against a
serious obstacle. At a certain moment the child comes to understand
.-:
that the attempt to remove the father as a rival would be punished by
the father with castration. From fear of castration, that is, in the in–
terests of preserving his virility, arises also a wish to possess his mother
and to remove the father. So far as this wish remains in the un–
conscious, it forms the basis of the sense of guilt. We believe that we
are here describing normal processes. We have, it is true, to make
1 See the author's
Totem und Tabu .
