The monograph reflects the experience of "slow reading" through the eyes of a psychiatrist of two well-known works by Dostoevsky: "Double" and "Crime and Punishment." The heroes of these works are considered from the standpoint of psychiatric science of the second half of the XIX century. and our time. The existing experience of analyzing Dostoevsky's characters by psychiatrists of the past and present is critically analyzed. An attempt was made to substantiate some of the methodological principles of considering fiction from the point of view of finding certain psychopathological phenomena, their analogues and poetic means, in some cases giving rise to their inadequate assessment as phenomena of psychopathology.