Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is a novel about guilt, morality and emotion. Throughout the novel many characters espouse the idea of reason and willpower over emotion – that if you have sufficient mental faculties you can prevent emotion from getting in the way of your actions and behave truly rationally. The student Raskolnikov believes this with all his heart when he sets out to murder a pawnbroker for the good of the community. This concept is quickly proved to be fundamentally flawed, however, as his inner guilt throws him into emotional turmoil and his brain attempts to protect him from the ugly truth of his actions. Raskolnikov displays several textbook examples of psychological defense mechanisms throughout the course of the novel, proving that even the most thorough reasoning and intellect cannot prevent the emotional and psychological response to a crisis.

Psychological “defense mechanisms” are the brain’s way of protecting itself from full awareness of unpleasant thoughts or behaviors. In Raskolnikov’s case, they are his brain’s way of protecting him from the full reality of what he has done, and the guilt associated with that reality. Some are more primitive, living in the subconscious and relying on emotion, and some are more complex and rely on conscious thought. Raskolnikov displays many of them over the course of the novel, as his brain attempts to come to terms with what he has done. Here are just a few examples.

Dissociation
A relatively primitive defense mechanism, Dissociation involves losing track of time; the narrative of life becoming disjointed. It allows the person to disconnect from reality for a while, seeking psychological shelter by escaping to a different sense of time. At one point in the novel, Raskolnikov gets confused about whether he has been to the police station yet. He states, “Bah! I am mixing it up; that was then. I looked at my sock then, too, but now…” (P. 192) An action that he associates with guilt (looking at the sock) causes his brain to try to escape to a different time, a time before he had interacted with the police. Dissociation appears in many places in the novel, with Raskolnikov frequently getting mixed up with regard to who was present during a certain time, whether he had said something or just thought it, and even with regard to his dreams and their relationship to reality.

Displacement
Displacement is when a person redirects their thoughts or actions away from the actual source of their problem, sometimes referred to as “taking it out on someone else.” It allows the person to vent their frustrations when they cannot take them out on the actual source. Raskolnikov is angry at Luzhin and lashes out at him almost from the very beginning, and his anger isn’t necessarily warranted to the extent that he experiences it. Getting mad at Luzhin is a way for his brain to release the feelings of anger and guilt that he feels towards himself without hurting someone he cares about.

Acting Out
Acting Out is when a person performs extreme behaviors in an attempt to express thoughts or feelings that they can’t comfortably acknowledge. The classic example of acting out is a child throwing a temper tantrum. Raskolnikov acts out for much of the middle part of the novel; the most noteworthy example is when he runs into Zametov at a cafe and makes a speech explaining exactly how he committed the murder, under the guise of conjecture. He makes this speech in a creepy whisper, standing too close to Zametov, and tops it off with a strange laugh, so that Zametov is convinced he is a madman. This allows him the freedom to get the confession off his chest in a safe way, a way where he knows nobody will actually believe him. He continues to act out for the next few chapters, saying and doing things that offend and incense others and lend credence to their belief that he is delirious.

Rationalization
Rationalization involves providing a seemingly-plausible alternate explanation for why something is happening, an explanation that sounds more reasonable or is easier to deal with than the real one. Raskolnikov blames his guilty conscience and crazy dreams and thoughts on a physical illness. “ ‘It is because I am very ill,’ he decided grimly at last, ‘I have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know what I am doing…I shall get well and I shall not worry…’ “ (P. 169) Blaming his guilty feelings on an illness allows him to distance himself from the reality of the situation, and also ties in to his belief that he can control his emotions – he comes up with a seemingly-logical reason for his emotional actions in order to devalue them.

Intellectualization
Intellectualization is the blaming of every emotional reaction on some kind of intellectual reason, finding an explanation for unwanted emotions that ignores the obvious source of them. While waiting in the police station Raskolnikov begins to get nervous, but intellectualizes the problem by saying “It’s a pity there’s no air here…it’s stifling…It makes one’s head dizzier than ever…and one’s mind too…” (P. 148)

The use of intellectualization ties in particularly strongly to the overall theme of reason over emotion and highlights the importance of these defense mechanisms to the text. Using textbook examples of defense mechanisms shows just how little control Raskolnikov really has over his own psychology. When setting out to commit the murder Raskolnikov is convinced he can get away with it, specifically because he will use his reason and not allow emotion to get in the way. Raskolnikov believes that the reason most crimes are badly concealed and easily detected “lay not so much in the material impossibility of concealing the crime, as in the criminal himself. Almost every criminal is subject to a failure of will and reasoning power by a childish and phenomenal heedlessness, at the very instant when prudence and caution are most essential.” (P. 112) Raskolnikov believes this “failure of will” is an avoidable circumstance, and further believes that he will not suffer the failure himself, because in his mind his actions are “not a crime.” His entire reasoning process relies on the idea that murdering the pawnbroker is not actually a crime, and that consciously remembering this fact will be enough to keep him sane and safe after the act is committed.

Right from the beginning, however, he runs into problems. His plan does not go as smoothly as he had anticipated, with one problem after another piling up and straining his nerves, culminating in the pawnbroker’s sister coming in at the wrong time and Raskolnikov being forced to murder her as well. No matter how thoroughly he had rationalized the murder of the pawnbroker, he did not anticipate the sister and so he has no justification for her death. This unjustified murder pokes holes in Raskolnikov’s carefully thought out reasoning process, and his own brain begins to betray him. Raskolnikov reacts psychologically to the murders, even as he endeavors to explain his actions rationally. By showing us these psychological defense mechanisms, Dostoyevsky argues that even the most well-reasoned justification is no match for the emotional turmoil that follows a crime. Raskolnikov’s guilt is his punishment, and all the defense mechanisms in existence cannot protect him from it.