About the book: 2006 / In the program of Russian literary realism of the 1840s and especially in the program of the “natural school” of literature diagnostic function is assigned. Central to this is a critical analysis of a society that appears increasingly afflicted by disease. The diagnostic process is thought of not only as a metaphor: when it comes to the study of society as a whole organism and its members as individual parts of the organism, the “natural school” often appeals directly to medicine. Methods attributed to medicine and psychology are transferred to the field of literary aesthetics and serve primarily as a paradigm for literary anthropology.