Early Russian biographers of FD thought that he had epilepsy and Freud's clinical observations outlined in Dostoevsky and Parricide were for years taken as the definitive authority on family violence. In that essay Freud argues (wrongly, subsequent critics have almost unanimously agreed) that Dostoevsky's illness was not physiological but the consequence of hysterical reactions brought on by wanting his father dead and feeling guilt when his father was murdered. (Again, shades of Kafka...) Freud used the term hystero-epilepsy to describe Dostoevsky's condition, although other sources more generally agree that the novelist was suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy brought on by secondary syphilis. He is also believed to have suffered from hypergraphia - the compulsion to write, or to communicate.
Whatever his illness(es), he was a troubled soul.
Whatever his illness(es), he was a troubled soul.
