P02-270 - Pathographical Aspects About N.V. Gogol

Abstract

Whether the dead of the author, who burnt the second volume of his book “The Dead Souls”, was psychopathological? A part of N.V.Gogol's contemporaries supported that his death was a consequence of “mental disease”. The myth about Gogol's “craziness” became a firm stereotype in European psychiatry presented by C.Lombrozo. Later, many russian psychiatrists (N.Bazhenov, V.Chizh, G.segalin, I.Galant, A.Lichko, A.Molochov, D.E.Melechov) tried to prove this opinion using published materials. However, all these psychiatrists did not give any scientific answer, for they had rather superficial understanding of life, kind of mind and religious constitution of N.V.Gogol. These psychiatrists, sorry to say, didn't have the systematic humanitarian knowledge so that to overcome the stereotype of natural-scientific paradygm of contemporary Psychiatry. One can't understand and relevant explain the behaviour of a man in another cultural and historical age, for example Gogol, without any special philological and philosophical preparation. The process of true understanding of another person is rather subjective, depending on an intentia of the consciousness on terminology of F.Brentano or on the hermeneutic circle according to M.Heidegger. All psychiatrists were under his personal delusions and simulacres about Gogol's spiritual life as a orthodox Christian man, because they used not full, and, mainly, not authentic information about Gogol's life, distored by some false interpretations, yet taken indirectly.