In his book, Memoirs of my nervous
illness, delivered to his Psychiatrist
Professor Flechsig, Daniel Paul Schreber
enclosed a perplexing letter...
Born in Germany in 1842, Daniel Paul
Schreber grew up to be a lawyer and
then a judge. He was married, and by the
age of 42 he had his first psychological
breakdown. He recovered after treatment
from Dr. Flechsig, and after some years
he relapsed and ended up in and out of
asylums until his death.
After the first collapse...
During one night
in bed, Paul had a negative premonition
that something was wrong.
As Paul began
losing sleep, even while taking sleep
medication, he was beginning to
hallucinate.
Returning to Dr. Flechsig 
for more treatment,
but unfortunately the treatment didn't work.
With the help of chloral hydrate,
Paul was able to gain some sleep.
His wife continued to visit him until
his state worsened.
As Paul's illness progressed his
delusional world took over. In his book
Memoirs of my nervous illness, Paul
elaborated on a complex world and
religion. In his world the human soul...
God in
Paul's religion...
Paul then
scribes the afterlife. 
His God approaches corpses...
Like all religions, there's an element of
reward and punishment to gain the favor
of the divine.
which are souls temporarily given human
shape by divine miracle. These souls
(including Jesus Christ) can be from prior
lives and resurrected to test souls
after an apocalypse, an apocalypse which
Paul thought he actually survived.
And of course, since this was during
the turn of the 20th the century,
The dark side of Paul's religion was how
a Devil could commit Soul Murder to
prevent uninterrupted Blessedness.
Paul's world included
communication from God via the nerves,
but also influences from those he did
not want access to his nerves.
Paul then describes the experience of his
illness and how trapped he felt by his
intrusive thoughts.
Despite all this struggle, Paul was able
to find periods of mental silence in life.
Paul Schreber's narrative of the Order
of the World moves into Biblical
destruction and renewal.
Bringing in
influences from Otto Weininger, which
you can see my review of Dora and
Freud, and influences from The Last Men
by Wolfgang Kirschbach, Paul again
compares Jewish people with femininity.
Paul then indirectly asserts
that the same phenomenon is happening to him.
Paul's narrative eventually falls on a
scapegoat for the experience of his unmanning.
Yet despite all these challenges
Paul found emotional support in his
important place in the World Order.
What
was not contrary to the World Order
according to Paul was eventually
reassessed as having a important goal
for the future of humanity.
Paul
then describes his struggle with his
feminine impulses.
In the end of the 1800's naturally these tendencies
would have to be hidden.
To justify these feelings Paul had to 
explain the limits of his voluptuous enjoyment.
The justification goes further into divine
realms, as a permission to enjoy his sensations.
Yet this desire
to be in voluptuousness has natural
imits and ebbs and flows
in Paul's life. He makes an acceptance
that these feelings are fleeting.
To bring Paul's feelings in
line with some moral foundation he found
that the voices in his mind helped to
support the divine goal.
Popular in psychiatric circles, Paul's
memoirs circulated despite censorship by
his family. Like the literary analysis of
Leonardo Da Vinci, Freud got a copy
and attempted to do the same analysis for
Schreber. Mostly dealing with neurotic
patients, and sending psychotic patients
to other doctors, Freud focused more on
the neurosis but he also showed how
stress manifested differently with
patients who he felt had paranoid
schizophrenia, including Schreber's case.
Freud though cautioned readers of his 
analysis.
Very quickly Freud saw
transferences with Schreber and Flechsig.
Some examples from
the book include 
To validate the
experiences that people have of sexual 
fluidity that people experience
throughout life Freud says,
Going beyond a biological theory of a
male menopause, Schreber's influences go
back farther.
Another angle of disappointment, beyond career,
was Schreber's family life.
Freud had the
help of Carl Jung who had more
experience with paranoid schizophrenics.
They did a study of many patients and they
Freud then describes how the Paranoia
develops unconsciously in the subject
who is embarrassed by their feelings. It
starts with the thought 
As developed later
in his libido theory on narcissism,
libido cravings can go external or
internal.
Yet a key question on libido is how much
withdrawal of interest in the world has
actually happened?
Carl Jung was an enthusiastic supporter
of Freud in the early years, but by this
time he was starting to find cracks in
Freud's libido theory.
The Neo-Freudian Lacan had a theory of
his own about the unconscious, which was
that it contained conceptual signifiers
like a language. Signifiers for Lacan
are concepts that point to phenomenon,
but are not the phenomenon itself. We can
imitate these signifiers and they have
enormous hold on us as we compare
ourselves to others and our ideals of
how we should be. Those ideals stay in
the unconscious and come out when there
is a conflict between what we are and
what we wish to be. This shows the power
of belief. If we believe in certain
concepts, or signifiers, our emotional
investments can deeply hurt us if they
are shown to be false by reality.
Signifiers or concepts point to
phenomenon, but we have to check if they
are pointing correctly. A lot of inner
conflict is when cultural language
doesn't match with our biological
impulses or evidence in external reality.
A form of brainwashing and disillusion.
Believability can be enhanced by
suggestions from parental figures and
then transferred onto authority figures
in society. When we trust them without
evidence it creates a pressure to
perform as expected repressing differing
impulses in the subject. For Lacan,
Schreber's tragedy was that he was,
The introduction of The Schreber Case by
Colin Mccabe describes this gap between
cultural conditioning and
A lot of psychology was influenced by the last
great philosophers, including Ludwig
Wittgenstein. He saw an almost
schizophrenic mentality in philosophy.
There can be an obsessive
day-dreaming about philosophical ideas. An
addiction to collect ideas, but no real
action to take them on. Philosophy for
20th century philosophers had to go from
ivory tower metaphysics into our
day-to-day lives.
If our knowledge isn't tested with
reality, and it also doesn't listen to
our biological intentions, then huge
areas of emotion, truth, purpose, and
practical uses are left out. In a milder
sense a schizophrenic loss of reality.
Wittgenstein in fact warned against
being an academic to avoid precisely
this problem.
Another layer of insight from 
psychoanalyst
Morton Schatzman, in Soul Murder, was the role
of Paul's father in his upbringing. He says,
His method of parenting was highly
controlled and stifling. Dr. Schreber,
It was,
There is little about Paul's mother, but
Anna Schreber is quoted as saying that,
He ultimately used
punishment on children, as young as
possible to
With Paul's
preoccupation with being forcibly held
in an asylum, his fear of losing his soul,
or autonomy, it makes sense to look into
his childhood. Morton says,
For example, Dr. Schreber's
book outlines many of the posture
regimens, physical restraints, and a
punishment board to record moral
transgressions, alternating cold / hot
water exposure, which show up in Paul's
hallucinations as "divine miracles", "being
tied-t0-earth" and "fastened-to-rays." The
control was also on the mind as well as
the body.
An interesting
point by Schatzman is on projection. All
of us had parents who warned of
punishments if we gave into this or
that temptation, but Morton asks,
Now I don't think all
things that parents warn their children
about is about their own temptation. Many
parents didn't take drugs and to
tell their children about the harmful
effects may not betray a projection
that they also took drugs in the past.
Yet it's quite possible that in many
situations, parents are lying about their
own pull to temptation. The thinking and
the temptation are often connected. If we
think about something tempting, it's
likely that a craving will arise that
can be repressed or acted upon. More
authentic advice would be to admit
temptation and then to warn of real
consequences of mistakes.
Another authentic response is to
investigate if the temptation is
harmless, or beneficial. A lot of
restrictive parenting is like a jealous
warding off of pleasure and happiness.
Morton Schatzman ends his book with
comparisons of Schreber's father's
family system to what prevailed later on
with the NAZIS. With Hitler there was a
similar hatred of weakness, and
sensitivity. Yet ironically, these
powerful people require submissiveness
in their families, and in the public, to
maintain their own power. It becomes an
endless loop where authoritarianism
perpetuates submissiveness in the
populace to maintain control, while at
the same time criticizing it.
In a recent review on current theories
of the origin of Schizophrenia, there are
advances upon the old psychoanalytic
theories with added biological
explanations.
Today Paranoia
Personality Disorder is fighting to stay
in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
It is often comorbid with other
personality disorders making it
difficult to find a separate cause.
Certainly childhood adversity and abuse
can lead to suspicion and mistrust in
adulthood. There are also genetic
influences like in Schizophrenia. On the
subject of sexual fluidity, there is more
evidence of genetic, hormonal, and immune
influences, but those same markers also
adjust throughout life in ways that
aren't completely understood because of
their enormous complexity. They suggest a
high heritability of sexual orientation,
but never 100%. People have to listen to
their body and recognize what makes them
feel strong love. Romantic decisions are
ultimately personal and consensual. They
shouldn't require scientists and
bureaucrats to make those decisions.
As later theories put their stamp on
the Schreber case, it is likely that paranoia,
schizophrenia, and sexual fluidity will
find many causes beyond a simple
withdrawal of libido as Freud originally
speculated. Our concepts can box people
in. We need theories, but it requires an
openness to new evidence to move closer
to the truth.
[Music]
