ABSTRACT
First, the author points out how the choice of a small town as a setting allows Dostoevsky to present the connections between the characters’ subjectivity and the construction of their social being. In addition, Demons sets out in the most remarkable manner how psychic functioning within small groups can lead to madness and murder. Once again, the questions that arise concern life in a world without God, divination and – in a new light this time – power relations between people. From a clinical point of view, what is discussed is the universal need for being subject to illness, and the fact that, in the case of a certain psychic organisation, what is needed is to construct an unconscious rather than interpret it. This chapter discusses, once again, the relation between madness and a perverse defence mechanism, and the way stupidity can be a means of avoiding psychosis. It also examines the stumbling blocks, misunderstandings, hopes, suffering and pain involved in a love relationship. Based on Dostoevsky’s Notebooks, we are given the origins of the main character, which shed light on certain aspects of his multifaceted personality. The scene between the protagonist and a monk brings us back to the patient-analyst relation, to a place between madness and murder, and to the question of truth, the main concern of both psychoanalytic practice and Dostoevsky’s thought.
