The symbolistic poetry of Alexander Blok is connected with the thinking of both philosophers and psychoanalysts about the world and the man inscribed in it by the phenomenon of “I”. When coming into contact with transcendence, the poet crosses the demarcation line dividing the rational and irrational world, consciousness and unconsciousness. In the first period of creativity, the Russian symbolist nourishes his imagination, infl uenced by the philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev, with longing for the ideal of femininity. The driving force of the Blok’s imagination becomes, understood after Freud, the desire to meet the ideal residing in the oneiric space, and then to unite with it at the dual level (physical and spiritual). From the psychoanalytic perspective, the cycle Verses about the Beautiful Lady is both an attempt to go beyond awareness and search for the sense of a poetic image, its original source in the unconscious, as well as entering into the mirror phase described by J. Lacan. Beautiful Lady plays a role of what the French psychiatrist appoints as an objet petit a: this object is essentially unreachable and that is why it raises a great desire in the lyrical subject. The mechanism of the transition from chaos to unity, though only apparent in Blok’s works, is identical to the psycho-physical experience of the child, observing himself in the mirror.

The issue of unconsciousness, correlated with the topic of a human’s sexual life, is one of the most significant philosophical trends in Nikolai Berdyaev. Focusing on this issue, the Russian thinker perceives the ambiguous assessment of psychoanalysis as the groundbreaking phenomenon of his times. Berdyaev’s attitude towards Sigmund Freud’s and Carl G. Jung’s theories oscillates between approval and negation, and is shaped on the plane of ontological deconstruction. According to Berdyaev, psychoanalysis allows people to realize the presence of gender energy as well as indicates the need for sublimation. However, the transformation of sex drive into the source of production is not possible without the spiritual principle – something that is not taken into consideration in psychoanalysis, which is, as Berdyaev claims, its greatest weakness.

Thinking of the earth as feminine derives from the oldest ideas as to the four rudimentary elements. Bipolarity, which is present in the take on the earth as an archetypical element, one giving life and finally absorbing it back, has not lost its relevance to this day. It is therefore myths, followed by philosophical considerations valuing the distinction between divine and human qualities, which have always been in conflict and cooperation, and these have marked the path Nikolai Berdyaev, the Russian religious thinker, takes. The problem of the nature of man’s gender is the fundamental issue of his philosophical anthropology. The stance represented by the author of The Meaning of the Creative Act is based on the conviction that the structure of the world constitutes two opposing elements, two opposing forces: good and evil, with good being linked to the male and evil to the female. The male to him is anthropological and personal, the female – cosmic and collective. One of Berdyaev’s most important beliefs is that the earth should be treated in a mystical sense as a principle female in matter and body. The driving force behind the world is the clash of both principles, the contact and interaction between the solar male and the terrestrial female. Through the prism of the cosmic battle of the genders, Berdyaev explains Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex, giving it a mystical- ‑symbolic dimension.