Description
Book SynopsisBy examining the psychiatric engagement with the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, and the decadents and revolutionaries, Sirotkina provides a rich account of Russia's medical and literary history during this turbulent revolutionary period.
Trade ReviewIrina Sirotkina gives a fascinating account of the growth of psychiatry in Russia through the prism of literature. -- Anne Garside Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease [Sirotkina] has a deep interest in her subject, and she offers a mine of information and commentary about the linked histories of psychiatry and literature in Russia (and in the post-1917 Russian emigre community). The results of her archival research are most rewarding for anyone interested in the history of Russian psychiatry. -- Daniel Rancour-Laferriere Times Literary Supplement In this absorbing work of exemplary scholarship, Irina Sirotkina... convincingly correlates trends in the theory and practice of Russian psychotherapy, during the fifty-year period studied, with changing developments in sociopolitical thought. -- Martin Bidney Slavic Review A worthy and cleverly constructed attempt to redress the excesses of casting psychiatry as a self-interested body. -- Ben Mayhew Medical History 2004 A valuable contribution to our understanding of the history of Russian psychiatry. -- Laura Goering Journal of the History of Medicine 2004 An interesting and respectable history of a critical time in Russia's history. -- Cary Federman European Legacy
Table of ContentsContents: Preface On Transliteration and Spelling Introduction 1 Gogol, Moralists, and Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry 2 Dostoevsky: From Epilepsy to Progeneration 3 Tolstoy and the Beginning of Psychotherapy in Russia 4 Decadents, Revolutionaries, and the Nation's Mental Health 5 The Institute of Genius: Psychiatry in the Early Soviet Years Notes Bibliography Index
