K voprosu o pričinach rannego rasprostranenija psichoanaliza v dorevoljucionnoj Rossii (About the causes of the rapid diffusion of psychoanalysis in pre-revolutionary Russia)

That psychoanalysis spread earlier in Russia than in Western Europe is by now commonly accepted by scholars. What is less known and little investigated are the causes of this phenomenon. This study offers itself as a reflection on what the possible motivations were for the rapid spread of Freudian discourse in Russian culture. In our opinion, there are two basic types: one cultural, the other socio-historical. The first is determined by the literary centrism of Russian culture and the contiguity between literature and psychoanalysis; the second by socio-economic changes, which began with the Great Reforms of the nineteenth century, and which set the stage for Freudian discourse. Relying on the literary centrism of Russian culture, psychoanalysis spread its discourse by means of literature: through the works of the great Russian writers it illustrated its theories and interpreted clinical cases. Furthermore, the linguistic structure and rhetoric of Freudian discourse united the literary and psychoanalytic language, and brought Freudian discourse very close to the Russian reader. The second motivation is of a social type: psychoanalysis interpreted the anxieties of the beginning of the XXth century, which arose out of the profound social changes deriving from the great reforms and arrival of modernity. Thus it provided completely new answers to the great problems raised by modernity such as the autonomy of the individual, the emancipation of women, and different relationships with authority.