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Dostoyevsky's Stalker and Other Essays on Psychopathology and the Arts

Michael Sperber

In Dostoyevsky's Stalker, we discover how the arts may illuminate psychiatry and psychoanalysis, as well as how these disciplines may elucidate works of literature, art, and cinema. Examining a diversity of authors, artists, historical figures, and psychopaths over the course of modern history, this groundbreaking collection of essays proposes a paradigm shift in psychiatry, based on the idea that some symptoms of mental illness may have constructive uses and may be used by the sufferer for mental and spiritual growth instead of going untreated or else being "analyzed away."
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University Press of America
Pages: 260 • Trim: 6 x 9¼
978-0-7618-4993-3 • Paperback • April 2010 • $54.99 • (£42.00)
978-0-7618-4994-0 • eBook • April 2010 • $52.00 • (£40.00)
Subjects: Literary Criticism / Russian & Former Soviet Union, Literary Collections / General, Psychology / General, Psychology / Psychopathology / General, Literary Criticism / General
Michael Sperber, M.D., is the author of Henry David Thoreau: Cycles and Psyche and the co-editor (with Lissy F. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D.) of Psychiatry and Genetics: Psychosocial, Ethical and Legal Considerations. Dr. Sperber trained in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, where he taught for many years. He has also taught in the honors program, Department of Social Relations, Harvard College, and is currently psychiatric consultant to the Neuropsychiatry / Behavioral Neurology Service at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Chapter 1 Preface
Chapter 2 Acknowledgments
Chapter 3 Introduction
Part 4 PART I: VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF SHAME
Chapter 5 1. Shame, the "As-if" Personality, and the Search for Identity
Chapter 6 2. Anton Chekov's "The Darling": Imitative Pseudo-Relationships
Chapter 7 3. Woody Allen's Zelig: The Human Chameleon
Chapter 8 4. Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley: Better a Fake Somebody than a Real Nobody
Chapter 9 5. Reinvented Selves: Frank Abagnale's Catch Me If You Can and James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Chapter 10 6. Henry David Thoreau's Alter Egos: Ralph Waldo Emerson and JOhn Thoreau Jr.
Chapter 11 7. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Underground Man and the Psychogenesis of Stalking
Chapter 12 8. The Case of the Quadriplegic Cyberterrorist
Chapter 13 9. The Unabomber at Harvard: A Murderous Phoenix
Chapter 14 10. The Unabomber, the Underground Man, and Asperger Syndrome
Chapter 15 11. Anton Chekhov's "The Man in a Case": Laughter that Killed
Chapter 16 12. Glenn Gould: the "Cased-in Man" Syndrome
Chapter 17 13. Homophobic Dysphoria in Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain
Chapter 18 14. A Shame-Inducing Epiphany in James Joyce's "The Dead"
Chapter 19 15. Anton Chekhov's "Lady with the Pet Dog": A Womanizer Learns to Love
Chapter 20 16. Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim: Inner and Outer Courts of Inquiry
Chapter 21 17. Edward Hopper's Last Painting, Two Comedians: An Ego-Absolving Gloss
Chapter 22 18. Alexander Pushkin's "The Shot": Revenge, a Dish Best Savored Cold
Part 23 PART II: POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Chapter 24 19. Introduction: The Many Facets of PTSD
Chapter 25 20. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield": Sleepwalker in a Mental Jail
Chapter 26 21. Frederick Law Olmsted's Childhood Traumas and the Birth of Psychoarchitecture
Chapter 27 22. Leo Tolstoy's "God Sees the Truth, but Waits": Through Suffering Comes Redemption
Chapter 28 23. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers: A Real-life Ivan and Makar
Chapter 29 24. Henry David Thoreau's "Wilderness Therapy": Sensory Awareness in Nature
Chapter 30 25. The Great Deeds of Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Crisis, Preparation, and a Deliberative Moment
Chapter 31 26. Introduction: The Creative Use of Alternate States of Consciousness
Chapter 32 27. Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer and Autoscopic Illusion
Chapter 33 28. Friedrich August Kekulé's Apparition of a Snake and the Structure of the Benzene Ring
Chapter 34 29. Henry David Thoreau: An Imaginary Mountain, A Symbolic Tombstone
Chapter 35 30. Demonic Hallucinations and Patricidal Guilt: Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov and Freud's Bavarian Artist
Chapter 36 31. The Three Phantoms of Herman Melville's Moby Dick
Part 37 PART IV: MOOD IMAGERY IN LITERATURE
Chapter 38 32. Introduction: Icarus, Daedalus, and Bipolar Disorder
Chapter 39 33. Manic-Depressive Mood Swings in Albert Camus' The Fall
Chapter 40 34. Bipolar Imagery in Henry David Thoreau's Journals
Chapter 41 Bibliography
From Dostoyevsky to the Unabomber; from Thoreau to Woody Allen, Michael Sperber's new book is a tour de force of integrative thinking and creative analysis. Dostoyevsky's Stalker will be a valuable work for all those seeking deeper channels into the human mind.
— Ronald Pies, M.D., editor-in-chief, Psychiatric Times, clinical professor of psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, author, Zimmerman's T


Consistently and elegantly in these essays, Dr. Sperber shows psychodynamics and the arts to be mutually illuminating-offering complementary ways of perceiving persons struggling for self-awareness, authenticity, and worthy lives. An intelligently adventurous book-the report of an alert, imaginative, and appropriately ranging professional.
— Paul Schwaber, Ph.D., professor of letters, Wesleyan University, author, The Cast of Characters: A Reading of Ulysses


Dr. Sperber has discovered Freud's secret, that the artist sometimes has more to teach us about the human condition than our patients. In Dostoyevsky's Stalker he opens new windows into the 'secret gardens of the self.'
— Alan A. Stone M.D., Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law & Psychiatry, Harvard Law School; author of Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life


Dostoyevsky's Stalker and Other Essays on Psychopathology and the Arts

Cover Image
Paperback
eBook
Summary
Summary
  • In Dostoyevsky's Stalker, we discover how the arts may illuminate psychiatry and psychoanalysis, as well as how these disciplines may elucidate works of literature, art, and cinema. Examining a diversity of authors, artists, historical figures, and psychopaths over the course of modern history, this groundbreaking collection of essays proposes a paradigm shift in psychiatry, based on the idea that some symptoms of mental illness may have constructive uses and may be used by the sufferer for mental and spiritual growth instead of going untreated or else being "analyzed away."
Details
Details
  • University Press of America
    Pages: 260 • Trim: 6 x 9¼
    978-0-7618-4993-3 • Paperback • April 2010 • $54.99 • (£42.00)
    978-0-7618-4994-0 • eBook • April 2010 • $52.00 • (£40.00)
    Subjects: Literary Criticism / Russian & Former Soviet Union, Literary Collections / General, Psychology / General, Psychology / Psychopathology / General, Literary Criticism / General
Author
Author
  • Michael Sperber, M.D., is the author of Henry David Thoreau: Cycles and Psyche and the co-editor (with Lissy F. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D.) of Psychiatry and Genetics: Psychosocial, Ethical and Legal Considerations. Dr. Sperber trained in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, where he taught for many years. He has also taught in the honors program, Department of Social Relations, Harvard College, and is currently psychiatric consultant to the Neuropsychiatry / Behavioral Neurology Service at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
  • Chapter 1 Preface
    Chapter 2 Acknowledgments
    Chapter 3 Introduction
    Part 4 PART I: VARIATIONS ON A THEME OF SHAME
    Chapter 5 1. Shame, the "As-if" Personality, and the Search for Identity
    Chapter 6 2. Anton Chekov's "The Darling": Imitative Pseudo-Relationships
    Chapter 7 3. Woody Allen's Zelig: The Human Chameleon
    Chapter 8 4. Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley: Better a Fake Somebody than a Real Nobody
    Chapter 9 5. Reinvented Selves: Frank Abagnale's Catch Me If You Can and James Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
    Chapter 10 6. Henry David Thoreau's Alter Egos: Ralph Waldo Emerson and JOhn Thoreau Jr.
    Chapter 11 7. Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Underground Man and the Psychogenesis of Stalking
    Chapter 12 8. The Case of the Quadriplegic Cyberterrorist
    Chapter 13 9. The Unabomber at Harvard: A Murderous Phoenix
    Chapter 14 10. The Unabomber, the Underground Man, and Asperger Syndrome
    Chapter 15 11. Anton Chekhov's "The Man in a Case": Laughter that Killed
    Chapter 16 12. Glenn Gould: the "Cased-in Man" Syndrome
    Chapter 17 13. Homophobic Dysphoria in Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain
    Chapter 18 14. A Shame-Inducing Epiphany in James Joyce's "The Dead"
    Chapter 19 15. Anton Chekhov's "Lady with the Pet Dog": A Womanizer Learns to Love
    Chapter 20 16. Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim: Inner and Outer Courts of Inquiry
    Chapter 21 17. Edward Hopper's Last Painting, Two Comedians: An Ego-Absolving Gloss
    Chapter 22 18. Alexander Pushkin's "The Shot": Revenge, a Dish Best Savored Cold
    Part 23 PART II: POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
    Chapter 24 19. Introduction: The Many Facets of PTSD
    Chapter 25 20. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Wakefield": Sleepwalker in a Mental Jail
    Chapter 26 21. Frederick Law Olmsted's Childhood Traumas and the Birth of Psychoarchitecture
    Chapter 27 22. Leo Tolstoy's "God Sees the Truth, but Waits": Through Suffering Comes Redemption
    Chapter 28 23. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers: A Real-life Ivan and Makar
    Chapter 29 24. Henry David Thoreau's "Wilderness Therapy": Sensory Awareness in Nature
    Chapter 30 25. The Great Deeds of Henry David Thoreau, Mohandas Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, Jr.: Crisis, Preparation, and a Deliberative Moment
    Chapter 31 26. Introduction: The Creative Use of Alternate States of Consciousness
    Chapter 32 27. Joseph Conrad's The Secret Sharer and Autoscopic Illusion
    Chapter 33 28. Friedrich August Kekulé's Apparition of a Snake and the Structure of the Benzene Ring
    Chapter 34 29. Henry David Thoreau: An Imaginary Mountain, A Symbolic Tombstone
    Chapter 35 30. Demonic Hallucinations and Patricidal Guilt: Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov and Freud's Bavarian Artist
    Chapter 36 31. The Three Phantoms of Herman Melville's Moby Dick
    Part 37 PART IV: MOOD IMAGERY IN LITERATURE
    Chapter 38 32. Introduction: Icarus, Daedalus, and Bipolar Disorder
    Chapter 39 33. Manic-Depressive Mood Swings in Albert Camus' The Fall
    Chapter 40 34. Bipolar Imagery in Henry David Thoreau's Journals
    Chapter 41 Bibliography
Reviews
Reviews
  • From Dostoyevsky to the Unabomber; from Thoreau to Woody Allen, Michael Sperber's new book is a tour de force of integrative thinking and creative analysis. Dostoyevsky's Stalker will be a valuable work for all those seeking deeper channels into the human mind.
    — Ronald Pies, M.D., editor-in-chief, Psychiatric Times, clinical professor of psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, author, Zimmerman's T


    Consistently and elegantly in these essays, Dr. Sperber shows psychodynamics and the arts to be mutually illuminating-offering complementary ways of perceiving persons struggling for self-awareness, authenticity, and worthy lives. An intelligently adventurous book-the report of an alert, imaginative, and appropriately ranging professional.
    — Paul Schwaber, Ph.D., professor of letters, Wesleyan University, author, The Cast of Characters: A Reading of Ulysses


    Dr. Sperber has discovered Freud's secret, that the artist sometimes has more to teach us about the human condition than our patients. In Dostoyevsky's Stalker he opens new windows into the 'secret gardens of the self.'
    — Alan A. Stone M.D., Touroff-Glueck Professor of Law & Psychiatry, Harvard Law School; author of Movies and the Moral Adventure of Life


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