ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author underlines Dostoevsky’s extraordinary understanding of the importance of the first years of a child’s life for the quality of his entire future, and specifically the importance of the relation between the mother and the baby. Once again, Heitor O’Dwyer de Macedo points out common characteristics between characters in Dostoevsky’s work. Using Dostoevsky’s female characters as a starting point, he offers us a passionate discussion of how the relation between sexuality and love in the lives of these women is determined by the mother-daughter relationship. The famous section on the Grand Inquisitor allows the author to demonstrate the importance of taking the unconscious into account to reflect on History. He underlines the differences between the conception of the Grand Inquisitor and that of Raskolnikov, before coming back to the work of constructing the unconscious. Concern with this construction, essential in the treatment of trauma and madness, has led to clinical experiments and has produced theories serving as models to certain political scientists who are striving to invent means which will allow democratic institutions to survive, or to resist attacks aiming to destroy them.
