The Psychology of the Dream about the “Golden Age” by the Hero of Dostoevsky’s story The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Abstract

The article focuses on psychological analysis of the dream about the “Golden Age” in the story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” by Dostoevsky. The patterns and conditions of the genesis of the dream about the “Golden Age” bt yhe heroes of Dostoevsky are revealed through the comparison of the cases of three heroes: Stavrogin, Versilov, the Ridiculous Man. Involving the Jungian concept of archetypical dream, the author of the article comes to the conclusion: the dream about the “Golden Age” reflects the complex of contradictory feelings. On the one hand, it uncovers the mental breakdown of a hero. On the other hand, it is connected with his dream about the humanity’s happiness, about recovering his own mental integrity and reestablishing the dialogue with the “other” and, in the case of the Ridiculous Man, it leads to attainment of the sense of purpose and leads him to the way, fraught with the “aberrations”.

Keywords

• dostoevsky
• the golden age
• the unconscious
• archetype