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I like Dostoevsky's psychological style as well. Never read Karamazov, but did read Crime and Punishment, the prototype for every story you'll ever see about a person going paranoid with guilt. It's incredibly vivid.

I had an early fascination with psychoanalytic theory as well. I read Lindner's Fifty-Minute Hour at 15 or so. It's a collection of psychiatric case histories from a very Freudian viewpoint, with Lindner essentially cracking the case every time. I thought that psychiatry was the coolest kind of detective work, and I wanted to sign up. A few years later as a sophomore or freshman in college, I saw the movie Freud with Montgomery Clift. That very much reinforced the perception.

So I majored in psych. Got pretty far into it before I realized that psychoanalytic theory was far from the science I had imagined. It's all a crock. All the real progress in psychiatry has been messing with the hardware, mostly pharmacologically.

I think it will prove to have been a historically useful crock, however. Psychiatric medicine gained attention and respectability even if the early successes were ephemeral triumphs over such almost unheard of disorders as "classical hysteria." (Nobody has hysteria as Freud described it anymore. Nobody. Maybe it was peculiar to the repressed Victorian atmosphere. Maybe it was a Fig Newton of his imagination.)

Regarding, "It's all a crock."

Got that from a Newhart--the old show with Suzanne Pleshette where he's a shrink--episode, where Bob goes back to his alma mater to talk to his professor (played by Keenan Wynn). That's what the old professor really thinks of his own life's work, and Bob's.

I laughed and laughed.

I realized that psychoanalytic theory was far from the science I had imagined. It's all a crock. All the real progress in psychiatry has been messing with the hardware, mostly pharmacologically.

Hi VR! "Messing with the hardware, pharmacologically," indeed. It's amazing to me how many young boys (especially) are diagnosed as having Attention Deficit Disorder these days, and are getting their brains fried on Ritalin.... Jeepers, 20 years ago (or so) that "disorder" didn't even exist.... It was simply understood that "boys will be boys."

Ever heard of the psychologist Victor Frankl? His book The Doctor and the Soul is a wonderful read. Frankl is a proponent of logotherapy -- which does not emphasize the "hardware" aspects of mental disorders, but regards them as diseases of the psyche or spirit that pharmacology cannot be expected to reach. I gather he's little heard of these days; the Freudians and Jungians pretty much have the field to themselves....

Anyhoot. Brothers K. is one of my favorites of all time, a book about faith and nihilism, among other things. Plus The Devils (sometimes called The Possessed) is an absolutely riveting read about a couple of anarchists and their fashionable friends. Dostoevsky excels at penetrating to the deeper reaches of the human mind and its motivations: Evidently he was an amazingly astute psychologist himself.

I do remember that scene from the Bob Newhart Show! "It's a crock!" LOLOL!

Thanks so much for writing, VR!