ation to gamble, Freud pointed out, is irresistable for the compulsive gambler much as the temptation to masturbate is irresistable for most individuals.
For Dostoevsky and for gamblers in general, Freud claimed, the addiction to gambling has its source in great fear of the father, a fear itself residing in a desire to be a love object for the father.
Thus a strong innate bisexual disposition becomes one of the preconditions or reinforcements of neurosis. Such a disposition must certainly be assumed in Dostoevsky, and it shows itself in viable form (as latent homosexuality) in the important part played by male friendships in his life, in his strangely tender attitude towards rivals in love and in his remarkable understanding of situations which are explicable only by repressed homosexuality, as many examples in his novels show.
Fear of castration by the father for desiring the mother drives the male child, according to orthodox Freudian theory, to attempt to take the mother's place, a choice that also implies castration (of a sort). The child's reaction to this "Oedipal" conflict becomes an unconscious wish to kill the father (the desire to commit parricide), coupled with his sexual desire for the father figure. The desire to kill the father cannot go unpunished within the mental economy. In the gambler, the sexual urges result in "play" that leads ultimately to the humiliation of losing, which is a just punishment for parricide.
Freud's famous English disciple Ernest Jones (1931) explored fully this theme of parricide in his discussion of Paul Morphy, the doomed chess champion. When Morphy's rival and father surrogate, Howard Staunton, refused to play against him, accusing him of commercial motives in setting up a match, the shock precipitated Morphy's emotional decline and possibly his early death. By refusing to play, Staunton revealed the parricidal aggression underlying Morphy's desire to beat him ...