Dostoevsky is recognized as one of the forerunners of psychoanalysis and existentialist thought, although his philosophy was mostly inferred from his fictional works. His own desperate poverty along with lifelong epileptic seizures and a prison sentence of four years in Siberia became grounds for most of his novels and characters. His works such as The Brothers Karamazov (1880), Crime and Punishment (1866) and Notes from the Underground (1864) remain his best novels, most published before texts in psychology. Dostoevsky’s narrative gives insight into the depth, complexity and irrationality of the human soul along with vivid depiction of despair and wretchedness through stories from the dark and cold corners of Russia. The evolution of his protagonists as criminal minds of Raskolnikov, Rogozhin, Stravgin and Smerdyakov in his various novels depicts mostly suffering, search for meaning, alienation and abject poverty.
The characters in his epic novels provide a remarkable insight into the psychology of a man, and he has been acknowledged as one of the greatest psychologists in world literature.
While the acclaim is owed to Wundt, James, Freud, etc for the formal establishment of ‘Psychology’ as a legitimate discipline, there have been a few subtle contributions by Dostoevsky, one of the greatest Russian writers in history. Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) is probably least mentioned as one of the early proponents of Psychology.
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