Dostoyevsky's epilepsy

Dostoyevsky was, perhaps, the most famous epileptic in history. The condition had a major influence on his philosophy and his conception of life. A recurring theme in his writing, epilepsy is something he analysed in great detail in many of his novels...

Some of this information is first-hand, in the form of the writer's own descriptions of his seizures and symptoms, as related in his various correspondences. There are also numerous second-hand descriptions of Dostoyevsky's condition, provided by his second wife, physicians who treated him, and friends. And, of course, there are the accounts of epileptic characters in his novels, which one can safely assume are based on his own experiences...

Fyodor Mikhailovich often told me that before the onset of an attack there were minutes in which he was in rapture. "For several moments," he said, "I would experience such joy as would be inconceivable in ordinary life - such joy that no one else could have any notion of. I would feel the most complete harmony in myself and in the whole world and this feeling was so strong and sweet that for a few seconds of such bliss I would give ten or more years of my life, even my whole life perhaps."

As a result of his fits he would sometimes bruise himself in falling, and his muscles would hurt him from his convulsions. Now and then his face turned red and sometimes splotches appeared. But the most important thing was that he lost his memory and for two or three days he would feel utterly broken. His mental condition was also grievous: he could scarcely overcome his anguish and hypersensitivity. The nature of this anguish, in his own words, was that he felt he was some kind of criminal; it seemed to him that he was weighed upon by mysterious guilt, by a great crime.

The most notable epileptic characters in Dostoyevsky's novels are Prince Myshkin in The Idiot and Smerdyakov in The Brothers Karamazov... "He was thinking, incidentally, that there was a moment or two in his epileptic condition almost before the fit itself (if it occurred in waking hours) when suddenly amid the sadness, spiritual darkness and depression, his brain seemed to catch fire at brief moments... His sensation of being alive and his awareness increased tenfold at those moments which flashed by like lightning. His mind and heart were flooded by a dazzling light. All his agitation, doubts and worries, seemed composed in a twinkling, culminating in a great calm, full of understanding..."

This very famous account of an ecstatic aura has helped neurologists to localise the origins of Myshkin's, and hence Dostoyevsky's, epileptic seizures. The emotional content of the aura suggests that this type of seizure was caused by abnormal electrical activity in parts of the temporal lobe...

Indeed, temporal lobe epilepsy is associated with transcendental experiences and hyper-religiosity. For example, the emperor Constantine is believed to have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy; it is said that, before the Battle of Milvian Bridge in A. D. 312, Constantine saw a vision of the cross emblazoned in the sky, with the words In hoc signo vinces ("In this sign you will win"), and, after winning the battle, made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire. Dostoyevsky was deeply religious, and this religiosity may well have been a result of his epilepsy...

Much more in the comprehensive essay at Neurophilosophy.