An important area of V.M. Bekhterev’s scientific research, which to this day does not have a productive resolution and remains controversial, was an attempt to combine the science of the human psyche with a speculative philosophy close to pantheistic views about the «universal soul». Bekhterev himself designated this concept as «evolutionary monism». In fact, it was a systematic attempt to get closer to understanding the essence of human life and, through this understanding, to the diagnosis and therapy of mental disorders. Another area of Bekhterev research is the concept of a holistic assessment of a person. In this regard, V.M. Bekhterev can rightfully be called the forefather, of the concept of the biopsychosocial nature of mental disorders that appeared much later. At the same time, the first and second conceptual developments of V.M. Bekhterev turned out to be internally interconnected, since they set themselves a single goal: to describe the medical and psychological nature of a person as completely and comprehensively as possible as an indissoluble unity of the bodily and mental.