Vladimir Bekhterev - Early Life

Early Life

Vladimir Bekhterev was born in Sorali, a village in the Viatka Territory of Russia. Bekhterev's childhood was not without difficulty. For instance, his father, a low ranking government official, died when he was young. While his childhood was not simple, Bekhterev did have the opportunity to attend Vyataka gymnasium in 1867, one of the oldest schools in Russia as well as the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg in 1873. Then he studied in St. Petersburg Medicosurgical Academy where he worked under professor Jan Lucjan Mierzejewski (pl). It was here where Bekhterev's interest in the discipline neuropathology and psychiatry was first sparked.

Russia went to war with the Ottoman Empire in 1877. Bekhterev took time off from his studies in order to help the war effort by volunteering with an ambulance detachment. After the war, he returned to school. While attending school, Bekhterev worked as a junior doctor in the clinic of mental and nervous diseases at the Institutes of Medic’s Improvement. Here he began performing his experimental work. In 1878, Bekhterev graduated from the Medical and Surgery Academy of St. Petersburg with a degree similar to a Bachelor of Medicine. After graduating, Bekhterev worked at the Psychiatric Clinic in St. Petersburg. where he was inspired to begin studying the anatomy and physiology of the brain, the area in which he would later make some of his most notable contributions. It was also during this time that Bekhterev married Natalya Bazilevskaya.

In 1880, Bekhterev began publishing his research. One of his earlier works described Russian social issues. In this paper, he wrote essays describing the individual characteristics of the Votyaks (Udmurts), a group of people under Russian rule who live in the Udmurt Republic between the rivers Vyatka and Kama. Then on April 4, 1881, Bekhterev successfully defended his doctoral thesis, "Clinical studies of temperature in some forms of mental disorders," and received his doctorate from the Medicosurgical Academy of St. Petersburg. This doctorate allowed Bekhterev to become a "private-docent" or associate professor, where he lectured on the diagnostics of nervous diseases.