Volume 11, Issue – 1, March 2026

Freudian Analysis-I: The Critique of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment

Dr Raghavendra Nayak

Assistant Professor & Head

Department of English

Govt. First Grade College

Raichur-584123

Abstract: Crime and Punishment focuses the theoretical framework of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytical analysis and the psychological complexity of Rodion Raskolnikov. This paper examines the complex relationship between distinct consciousness of individuals, social circumstances, and moral conflict, inner-stress of Raskolnikov’s actions which emerges from a seam of poverty, isolation, and ideological extremism. His confidence in actual life with the superiority of extraordinary individuals that truly reflects a psychological defence mechanism. His individual connections with the surrounding rooted in tyranny and compensatory longing. The paper is drawing on Freud’s concepts of instinct, repression, and palliative measures. It also argues that Raskolnikov’s intellectual reasonings for crime are ultimately undermined by unconscious guilt and emotive unsteadiness. His imagined pre-eminence and proof of identity with figures, such as superhuman or Napoleon, of power purpose as misapprehensions that temporarily safeguard him from anguish but steadily increase his mental and moral catastrophe.

The study further reveals how his emotional fragmentation demonstrates through alienation and anxiety. Additionally, the paper explores the role of interpersonal relationships with other characters by guiding Raskolnikov toward self-realization and redemption. Thus, the paper concludes that Dostoevsky presents crime not merely as a legal transgression but as a deeply psychological and ethical phenomenon. Ultimately, the Freudian perspective reveals that human suffering arises from unresolved inner conflicts that cannot be rationally suppressed.

Keywords: Psychoanalysis; Tyranny; Guiltiness; Isolation; Moral Conflict.

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