Daniel Paul Schreber

Daniel Paul Schreber

Daniel Paul Schreber (German: [ˈʃʀeːbɐ]; 25 July 1842 – 14 April 1911) was a German judge who suffered from what was then diagnosed as dementia praecox (later known as paranoid schizophrenia or schizophrenia, paranoid type). He described his 2nd mental illness (1893–1902), making also a brief reference to the 1st disorder (1884–1885) in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (original German title Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken).[1] The Memoirs became an influential book in the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis thanks to its interpretation by Sigmund Freud.[2] There is no personal account of his 3rd disorder (1907–1911), but some details about it can be found in the Hospital Chart (in Appendix to Lothane's book). During his second illness he was treated by Prof. Paul Flechsig (Leipzig University Clinic), Dr. Pierson (Lindenhof), and Dr. Guido Weber (Royal Public Asylum, Sonnenstein).

Schreber's experiences

Schreber was a successful and highly respected judge until middle age when the onset of his psychosis occurred. He woke up one morning with the thought that it would be pleasant to "succumb" to sexual intercourse as a woman. He was alarmed and felt that this thought had come from somewhere else, not from himself. He even hypothesized that the thought had come from a doctor who had experimented with hypnosis on him; he thought that the doctor had telepathically invaded his mind. He believed his primary psychiatrist, Prof. Paul Flechsig, had contact with him using a "nerve-language" of which Schreber said humans are unaware. He believed that hundreds of people's souls took special interest in him, and contacted his nerves by using "divine rays", telling him special information, or requesting things of him. During one of his stays at the Sonnenstein asylum, he concluded that there are "fleeting-improvised-men" in the world, which he believed were souls that temporarily resided in a human body, by way of a divine miracle.[3]

As his psychosis progressed, he believed that God was turning him into a woman, sending rays down to enact 'miracles' upon him, including little men to torture him. Schreber was released from psychiatric hospitals around 1902, after the publication of his book. He reassumed his private activities, which he conducted very well up to 1907, when his mother died. He went then through a final hospitalisation. Schreber died in 1911, in an asylum.

Though Schreber's book was made famous because of its value as a psychological memoir, the reason Schreber wrote the book was not for reasons of psychology. Schreber's purpose was expressed in its subtitle (which was not translated as part of the English edition, but fully reproduced inside it), "In what circumstance can a person deemed insane be detained in an asylum against his declared will?" Schreber, an accomplished jurist, wrote these memoirs in order to pose a legal question, namely, to what extent is it legitimate to keep someone like himself in an asylum when he expressly declares he desires his liberty.

Freud's interpretation and its criticisms

Although Freud never interviewed Schreber himself, he read his Memoirs and drew his own conclusions from it. Freud thought that Schreber's disturbances resulted from repressed homosexual desires, which in infancy were oriented at his father and brother. Repressed inner drives were projected onto outside world and led to intense hallucinations which were first centred on his physician Dr. Flechsig (projection of his feelings towards brother), and then around God (who represented Schreber's father, Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber). During first phase of his illness Schreber was certain that Dr. Flechsig persecuted him and made direct attempts to murder his soul and change him into a woman (he had what Freud thought to be emasculation hallucinations, which were in fact, according to Schreber's words an "unmanning" (entmannung) experience). In the next period of ailment he was convinced that God and the order of things demanded of him that he must be turned into a woman so that he could be the sole object of sexual desire of God. Consideration of the Schreber case led Freud to revise received classification of mental disturbances. He argued that the difference between paranoia and dementia praecox is not at all clear, since symptoms of both ailments may be combined in any proportion, as in Schreber's case. Therefore, Freud concluded, it may be necessary to introduce a new diagnostic notion: paranoid dementia, which does justice to polymorphous mental disturbances such as those exhibited by the judge.

Freud's interpretation has been contested by a number of subsequent theorists, most notably Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their work Anti-Oedipus and elsewhere. Their reading of Schreber's Memoirs is a part of their wider criticism of familial orientation of psychoanalysis and it foregrounds the political and racial elements of the text; they see Schreber's written experience of reality abnormal only in its honesty about the experience of power in late capitalism. Elias Canetti also devoted the closing chapters of his theoretical magnum opus Crowds and Power to a reading of Schreber. Finally, Jacques Lacan's Seminar on the Psychoses and one of his écrits "On a Question prior to Any Possible Treatment of Psychosis" are predominantly concerned with reading and evaluating Schreber's text over-against Freud's original and originating interpretation.

Schatzman's interpretation

In 1974, Morton Schatzman published Soul Murder, in which he gave his own interpretation of Schreber's psychosis. Schatzman's interpretation was in turn based on W. G. Niederland's research from the '50s, (Niederland had previously worked with survivors of Nazi concentration camps).[4] Schatzman had found child-rearing pamphlets written by Moritz Schreber, Daniel Schreber's father, which stressed the necessity of taming the rebellious savage beast in the child and turning him into a productive citizen. Many of the techniques recommended by Moritz Schreber were mirrored in Daniel Schreber's psychotic experiences. For example, one of the "miracles" described by Daniel Schreber was that of chest compression, of tightening and tightening. This can be seen as analogous to one of Moritz Schreber's techniques of an elaborate contraption which confined the child's body, forcing him to have a "correct" posture at the dinner table. Similarly, the "freezing miracle" might mirror Moritz Schreber's recommendation of placing the infant in a bath of ice cubes beginning at age 3 months. Daniel Paul Schreber's older brother, Daniel Gustav Schreber, committed suicide in his thirties. Hans Israels argued against the interpretations of Niederland and Schatzman, claiming that Schreber's father had been unfairly criticized in the literature, in his 1989 book Schreber: Father and Son.[5]

Lothane's interpretation

More recently, Henry Zvi Lothane has argued against the interpretations of Niederland and Schatzman in his book In Defense of Schreber. Soul Murder and Psychiatry.[6] Lothane's Schreber research included the study of archival records concerning the relationship between Schreber and the other significant people in his life, including his wife and his doctors. On Lothane's account, the existing literature on Schreber as a rule (1) leaves substantial gaps in the historical records which careful archival research could in some measure fill; (2) leaves out psychoanalytically significant relationships, such as that between Schreber and his wife and (3) overstates the purportedly sadistic elements in Schreber's father's child-rearing techniques.[7] Lothane's interpretation of Schreber also differs from previous texts in that he considers Schreber a worthwhile thinker.[8]

In popular culture

Notes

  1. ↑ Schreber, Daniel Paul (1903). Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. New York: New York Review of Books, 2000. ISBN 0-940322-20-X.
  2. ↑ Freud, Sigmund; Webber, Andrew (translator); MacCabe, Colin (contributor) (1911). The Schreber Case. New York: Penguin Classics Psychology, 2003. ISBN 0-14-243742-5.
  3. ↑ Schreber, Daniel Paul (1903). Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. New York: New York Review of Books, 2000. ISBN 978-0-940322-20-2.
  4. ↑ Niederland, W G. Schreber: Father and Son. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 28 Apr 1959 (2), 151-169
  5. ↑ Israels, H. (1989). Schreber: Father and Son. Madison: International Universities Press.
  6. ↑ Lothane. H. (1992). In Defense of Schreber. Soul Murder and Psychiatry. Hillsdale, NJ/London: The Analytic Press. Second, German edition, Lothane, Z. (2004). Seelenmord und Psychiatrie Zur Rehabilitierung Schrebers. Giessen: Psychosozial-Verlag. (2nd edition of ‘’In Defense of Schreber’’
  7. ↑ Lothane, Z. (1992). In defense of Schreber. Soul murder and psychiatry. Hillsdale, NJ/London: The Analytic Press
  8. ↑ Lothane, Z. (2011). The teachings of honorary professor of psychiatry Daniel Paul Schreber, J.D., to psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, or dramatology’s challenge to psychiatry and psychoanalysis. Psychoanalytic Review, 98(6): 775-815.

References

External links

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