Family Pathology in Crime and Punishment

Dostoevsky's novel, Crime and Punishment, is one of the great literary works of mid-19th century Russia. It is a great work not so much from the power of its prose, but because it catches the imagination of the reader in many ways. It is the study of a crime from a psychological viewpoint. It is also a study of individual psychopathology, of which much has been written.2, 4, 6, 8 Finally, it is Dostoevsky's political and social commentary on mid-19th century Russia.10 One of the most powerful undercurrents of the novel, however, is its study of a family. Although much has been written from a psychoanalytic viewpoint concerning the central character, Raskolnikov, there has been no examination of his family.

This paper examines the family pathology in the novel Crime and Punishment according to four basic theories which attempt to explain schizophrenogenic families. The four theories are those of (1) Theodore Lidz, (2) The Palo Alto Group, (3) Wynne and Singer, and (4) Bowen. The impressive achievement of Dostoevsky is that he describes a classic schizophrenic family nearly one hundred years before psychiatry had begun to examine such a phenomenon.1 His description of Raskolnikov and his family demonstrates all of the concepts used to describe schizophrenic families.

The concept of family pathology explains Raskolnikov's odd symptoms (diagnosis), his motivation for the murders he committed (dynamics) and the resolution of his conflict. In order to give background to the family dynamics in Crime and Punishment, a brief review of the plot is in order. Following this will be a discussion of the inevitable march of powerful family influences forcing Raskolnikov into survival tactics which result in his crime, punishment, and the resolution of his fearfully pathologic family conflict.

Raskolnikov is introduced when already in the midst of an “almost morbid state of irritability and tension” and in great poverty (p. 1).3 He is considering murdering a woman pawnbroker. He is so