By considering the people who populate Dostoevsky's world as personifying a whole spectrum of human possibilities and modes of relation, Heitor O'Dwyer de Macedo's discussion of the characters - including those from Notes from Underground, Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov - allows him to explore fundamental issues constitutive of clinical practice, such as trauma, fantasy, perversion and madness.

Clinical Lessons on Life and Madness will provide an important resource for psychoanalysts with an interest in literature, as well as students of literature seeking a psychoanalytic interpretation.