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PARTISAN REVIEW
from the Oedipus complex may disappear if reality gives them no
further nourishment. But the character of the father remains the
same, or rather, it deteriorates with the years, and so Dostoevski's
hatred for the father, his wish for the death of this wicked father, is
maintained. Now it is dangerous
if
reality fulfils such repressed wishes.
Phantasy has become reality, all defensive measures are reinforced.
Dostoevski's seizures now assume an epileptic character; they still of
course signify the father identification as a means of punishment, but
they have become terrible, like the frightful death of the father itself.
What further content they have absorbed, particularly sexual content,
escapes conjecture.
One thing is noteworthy. In the ' aura of the epileptic attack,
one moment of supreme happiness is felt, which may very well have
been the fixation of the triumph and the liberation felt at hearing the
news of the death, to be followed immediately by an all the more
cruel punishment. We have divined just such a sequence of triumph
and mourning, festive joy and mourning, in the brothers of the primal
horde who murdered their father, and we find it repeated in the
ceremony of the funeral feast.
If
it had happened that Dostoevski had
been free from his seizures in Siberia, this would only substantiate the
view that his seizures were his punishment. He did not need them any
longer, when he had been punished in another way. But this cannot
be proved. Rather does the necessity of punishment felt by Dostoev–
ski's psychic economy explain the fact that he lived through these
years of misery and humiliation without breaking down. Dostoev–
ski's sentence as a political offender was unjust; he must have been
aware of this, but he accepted this undeserved punishment at the
hands of the Tsar, the Little Father, as a substitute for the punish–
ment he deserved for his sin against his real father. Instead of punish–
ing himself, he let himself be punished by his father's deputy. We
glimpse here a proof of the psychological justification of penalties
imposed by society. It is a fact that large groups of criminals long
for punishment. Their super-ego demands it, thus saving itself from
inflicting the punishment.
Everyone who is familiar with the complicated transformation
of meaning undergone by hysterical symptoms will understand that
no further attempt will be made here, beyond this beginning, to
fathom the meaning of Dostoevski's attacks.
1
It is enough that we may
1 See
Tot em und Tabu .
The best account of the meaning and content
of his seizures was given by Dostoevski himself, when he told his friend Strakhov
that the irritability and depression which followed an epileptic seizure were due to
