Dostoevsky

<p>Andrï Gide once said that Feodor Dostoevsky lost himself in the characters of his books and for this reason it is in them that he can be found again. In Dostoevsky: The Author as Psychoanalyst Louis Breger approaches Dostoevsky psychoanalytically not as a patient to be analyzed but as a fellow psychoanalyst someone whose life and fiction are intertwined in the process of literary self-exploration.Raskolnikov's dream of the suffering horse in Crime and Punishment has become one of the best known in all literature its rich imagery expressing meaning on many levels. Using this as a starting point Breger goes on to offer a detailed analysis of the novel situating it at the pivotal point in Dostoevsky's life between the death of his first wife and his second marriage. Using insights from his psychological training Breger also explores other works by Dostoevsky among them his early novel The Double which Breger relates to the nervous breakdown that Dostoevsky suffered in his twenties as well as Notes from Underground The Possessed The Idiot The Brothers Karamazov and so forth. Additionally details from Dostoevsky's own life - his compulsive gambling his epilepsy his philosophical political religious and mystical beliefs and the interpretations of them found in existing biographies - are analyzed in detail.</p>