The Brothers Karamazov: A Psychoanalytic Approach Anonymous 12th Grade

When reading a book as brilliant as The Brother’s Karamazov, one wonders where Dostoevsky’s inspiration came from. According to Sigmund Freud, the novel must not be studied as a fiction but as a science, that being psychology. It seems that the innermost thoughts of Dostoevsky were manifested in his characters. Dostoevsky, just like every other boy, experienced the Oedipal complex during his childhood. Freud says that at this stage in a boy’s life, he has the desire to kill his father in order to obtain his mother, but at the same time he admires and loves his father. Due to his father’s harsh disposition and his eventual murder, Dostoevsky was never able to get over his conflicting feelings of guilt. The protagonists in The Brothers Karamazov represent warring aspects of Dostoevsky’s psyche. It is an allegory in which Dostoevsky’s harshly sadistic superego, which inflicts all the feelings of guilt he felt about his father’s murder, is represented by Fyodor Pavlovich, his pleasure-driven id, which is his impulsive desire to kill his father, is represented by Smerdyakov, and his guilt-ridden ego is represented by the other three brothers, Dmitri, Ivan, and Alyosha.

Sigmund Freud identifies three major parts that make up the...