Dostoevsky and others. (Article 10 of the history of my epilepsy.)

Dostoevsky and others.

As I mentioned in the section "Avoiding epileptics" it is easy on the Internet to find and print out a list of 100 famous people who suffered from epilepsy. Socrates, Julius Caesar, Molière, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alfred Nobel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky and others. Most lived a long time ago, and we really know nothing of their epileptic suffering and for that reason, I was never really able to feel any comfort in knowing that the people who have been successful also suffered from epilepsy. However, there is a brilliant exception to the listed among epileptics, and it is Dostoevsky. In his literature, and especially in The Idiot, he describes epileptic seizures so that even an epileptic understands.

I remember when DR Janov long ago asked me to describe an epileptic seizure, and I replied that I unfortunately did not have Dostoevsky's verbal brilliance and ability to verbalize and explain all the dimensions of my feelings and my pain during a seizure, but I asked him to read the section in The Idiot when Prince Myshkin meticulously describes a fit from the moments just before a seizure until is over:

“He fell to thinking, among other things, about his epileptic condition, that there was a stage in it just before the fit itself (if the fit occurred while he was awake), when suddenly, amidst the sadness, the darkness of soul, the pressure, his brain would momentarily catch fire, as I was, and all his life’s forces would be strained at once in an extraordinary impulse. The sense of life, of self awareness, increased nearly tenfold in these moments, which flashed by like lightning. His mind, his heart were lit up with an extraordinary light; all his agitations, all his doubts, all his worries were as if placated at once, resolved in a sort of sublime tranquility, filled with serene, harmonious joy, and hope, filled with reason and ultimate cause. But these moments, these glimpses were still only a presentiment of that ultimate second (never more than a second) from which the fit itself began. That second was, of course, unbearable. Reflecting on that moment afterwards, in a healthy state, he had often said to himself that all those flashes and glimpses of a higher self-sense and self-awareness, and therefore, of the "highest being" were nothing but an illness, a violation of the normal state, and if so, then this was not the highest being at all but, on the contrary, should be counted as the very lowest.   And yet he finally arrived at an extremely paradoxical conclusion: "So what if it’s an illness?" he finally decided "Who cares that it is an abnormal strain, if the result itself, if the moment of the sensation, remembered and examined in a healthy state, turns out to be the highest degree of harmony, beauty, gives a hitherto unheard-of and unknown feeling of fullness,  measure,  reconciliation, and an ecstatic, prayerful merging with the highest synthesis of life?" These vague expressions seemed quite comprehensible to him, though still too weak. That it was indeed "beauty and prayer,’ that it was indeed ‘the highest synthesis of life," he could not doubt, nor could he admit of any doubts. Was he dreaming some sort of abnormal and nonexistent visions of that moment, as from hashish, opium, or wine, which humiliate the reason and distort the soul? He could reason about it sensibly once his morbid state was over. Those moments were precisely only an extraordinary intensification of self-awareness - if there was a need to express this condition in a single word - self-awareness and at the same time a self-sense immediate in the highest degree. If in that second, that is, in the very last conscious moment before the fit, he had happened to succeed in saying clearly and consciously to himself: "Yes, for this moment one could give once’s whole life!" - then surely this moment in itself was worth a whole life. However, he did not insist on the dialectical part of his reasoning: dullness, darkness of soul, idiocy stood before him as the clear consequence of these "highest moments." Naturally, he was not about to argue, in earnest. His reasoning, that is, his evaluation of this moment, undoubtedly contained an error, but all the same he was somewhat perplexed by the actuality of the sensation. What, in fact,  was he to do with this actuality? Because it had happened, he had succeeded in saying to himself in that very second, that this second, in its boundless happiness, which he fully experienced, might perhaps be worth his whole life. "At that moment," as he had once said to Rogozhin in Moscow, when they got together there, ‘at that moment, I was somehow able to understand the extraordinary phrase that "time shall be no more". Probably, he added, smiling, "it’s the same second in which the jug of water overturned by the epileptic Muhammad did not have time to spill, while he had time during the same second to survey all the dwellings of Allah".”

It is interesting to read David Ingvar's biography of Dostoevsky in the book "Ten Brains" in which he emphasizes that there are few people with epilepsy symptoms that it has been written so much about. Already at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century leading Russian and foreign neurologists published essays on Dostoevsky's epilepsy, although neither brain imaging nor electrophysiological methods (EEC) were available. David Ingvar mentions that Freud (who dismissed the pathological Dostoyevsky) obviously believed that emotional factors in childhood, especially youthful erotic escapades and bad relationship with his father could have had an impact on the disease.

David Ingvar adds that although Dostoevsky's seizures are well described both by Dostoevsky himself, and by his wife Anna, we cannot with certainty state what form of epilepsy it was. However, the descriptions, like those in The Idiot, including joy of  transcendental nature,  point to an epilepsy of temporal lob character a now well defined type, which perhaps, according to some researchers, may be due to early brain damage in fetal life! The epileptic process begins in the temporal lobe (-lobes) where the control of emotions is located. Epileptic discharges here may trigger anxiety, for example, in some cases, hallucinations, memory impairment and then sometimes, but not always, a general attack with unconsciousness and convulsions.

2400 years ago the Greeks and Hippocrates believed that epilepsy was linked to religious experiences, and was known as ‘the sacred disease’ because the visions that people with epilepsy had were God sent. If Hippocrates had to live and read "The Idiot" by Dostoevsky (who certainly had read Hippocrates), especially the section where he describes his feelings during the seconds when he feels his aura, he probably would have nodded in recognition. Prince Myshkin comments to a friend; “it’s the same second in which the jug of water, overturned by the epileptic Muhammad, did not have time to spill, while he had time during the same second to survey all the dwellings of Allah.”

In ancient Rome, epilepsy was considered a disease of the assembly hall and had been sent as a punishment from the Gods. In most cultures throughout history, epileptics have been stigmatized, isolated and even put in mental hospitals and in prisons. As late as 40-50 years ago epileptics were placed together with mentally retarded patients in psychiatric hospitals, and we do not need to go to many decades back in time to find epileptics, criminals and persons with chronic syphilis in the same institutions in Sweden. So I’m not surprised to find out that this still happens in many countries around the world, for example, in Eastern Europe and Africa.

In the neurological context, it is referred rarely or never to the Bible. With posthumously religious support from my mother, I take the liberty, however, to refer to l:a Genesis 3:16. It says: " I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."  My painful and abnormally slow birth which lasted over 48 hours was a product of my mother’s fidelity to the Bible. It is not just Hippocrates, who believe that epilepsy was a God sent disease.

In the world of epilepsy, so rich in syndrome, variations and types, I am one of many. Since, however, I received the information directly from my mother's mouth from where she got her ideas to give me a painful start, and since we were a fairly typical Christian / religious family it would not surprise me if I had and have many soul mates with the same sacred disease background around the world. Perhaps I should add that I can easily identify with many different variations of symptoms that are described in the voluminous technical neurological epilepsy bouquet. Much of the original underlying factor as pain and horror from an insane, sick birth process followed by life twisting neuroses I have by the help of a genius from Malibu, California, United States, been able to understand much more than I technically can take in.

The greatest happiness is to know why you are unhappy. Fyodor Dostoevsky