ABSTRACT

The author sees the main character, Raskolnikov, as illustrating the magnitude of the existential problem of living in a world without God. Through Raskolnikov, Dostoevsky presents the founder of a new vision that revolutionises our way of seeing the world. A change of the frame of thought is needed, and those who attempt to bring it about risk finding themselves at the limits of madness. Every creator has this borderline experience, and the revolution involved is at the core of psychoanalytic treatment. De Macedo speaks in some detail about one element of the narrative structure present in all of Dostoevsky’s novels: the fact that relationships between characters are organised on a model in which characters are coupled, so that one protagonist is the repressed version of another. This approach leads to an infinity of discoveries which give this book complete autonomy in relation to Dostoevsky’s works. The reader does not have to know these works to be interested in De Macedo’s discussion of them. What we learn about the relation between Raskolnikov and Porfiry, the examining magistrate, is astounding. This relationship is put to use by the author to propose a model for dealing with perverse organisation in analysis, knowing that perversion is a last bastion against madness. Just as astounding is what the Sonya character teaches us about the way women relate to love, about the experience of love – an experience and a mystery constituting a red thread in Dostoevsky’s work. In this chapter, Heitor O’Dwyer de Macedo continues to establish links between various characters in the novels; for example, he points out the similarities and differences between the Underground Man and Marmeladov, Sonya’s father, and between the characters in Crime and Punishment and the subsequent novels.