Ego versus Individuality: A Psychoanalytic Study of Prince Myshkin in Dostoevsky’s The Idiot

Abstract

The Idiot is the most personal and autobiographical of Dostoevsky’s novels. As the title goes, it is
about a man whom the world would call an idiot; a person who does not fit in to, or is ignorant
about the reality and expectations of society (like being shrewd, being masculine). In Freud’s
perception, he would be a person who is of Id (as a biological human being) and a strong super
ego (believes in morals, love, sympathy).Thus,a person without a proper, balanced ego and
representation. He is a perfect and good human in terms of ideals and a ridiculous and gullible
person in terms of society. He is mocked for his impracticality and innocence. His ‘egolessness’
can be identified in the title itself. His name is Prince Myshkin but he is labeled as an idiot. He has
no practical identity for himself but carries out his role in contributing to society successfully.
According to him, paradoxically, to be an individual is to lose one’s individuality, which hinders
one to be sacrificial and live for the wellness of others; to be the fully developed ‘ego’ is to
annihilate that ego in favor of others. In one of his letters he writes “the law of individuality on
earth binds. The I [ego] obstructs”(Dostoevsky 20).
This article focuses on the psychological structure of Prince Myshkin’s personality, which
according to Freud, usually has a proper Id, Ego and Superego while Myshkin’s personality has
the Id and a superego that has overgrown into his Ego making him imbalanced and egoless. The
study also contrasts the tripartite personality(Id, Ego and Super-ego) with Myshkin’s personality.
The article further studies the background of the novel and the reflection of Dostoevsky’s entire
persona in Prince Myshkin.