The

Schreber
Case
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The
Schreber
Case
Psychoanalytic Profile
of a Paranoid Personality
An Expanded Edition

William G. Niederland, M.D.

~ ~~'~~~~~i?G9Xp Press
New York London
First Published by
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, New Jersey 07430

Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 by Psychology Press

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Copyright © 1984 by The Analytic Press

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, by photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other
means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN O-88163-02S·X

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 73-79923

Publisher's Note
The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint
but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent.
To
JACKIE
and my sons
JAMES
DANIEL
ALAN
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Contents

List of Illustrations, ix
Acknowledgments, xi
I ntroduction, xiii

PART I BACKGROUND, 1
1 / Who Was Daniel Paul Schreber?, 3
2 / Excerpts from the Memoirs, 9
3 / Freud's Analysis
A Summary, 23
4 I General Comments on Freud's Schreber Analysis, the Memoirs,
and Paranoid Fantasies, 27
5 / Paranoia and Its History, 33

PART" FURTHER RESEARCH ON SCHREBER, 37

6 / Three Notes on the Schreber Case, 39
7 / Schreber: Father and Son, 49
8 / Schreber's Father, 63
9 / The "Miracled-Up" World of Schreber's Childhood, 69
10 / Analysis of a Delusion
"Margraves of Tuscany and Tasmania," 85
11 / Further Data on the "Historical Truth" in Schreber's Delusions, 93
12 / Schreber and Flechsig
A Further Contribution to the "Kernel of Truth" in
Schreber's Delusional System, 101
13 / The Schreber Case
Sixty Years Later, 107
Bibliography for Parts I and II, 113

PART tit OTHER ASPECTS OF THE CASE, 119

14 / Schreber's Delusion of the End of the World, 121
by Maurits Katan
15 / Schreber's Hereafter
Its Building-Up (Aufbau) and Its Downfall, 127
by Maurits Katan
vii
viii / Contents

16 / The Mother-Conflict in Schreber's Psychosis, 151

by Robert B. White
17 / The Schreber Case Reconsidered in the Light of Psycho-Social Concepts, 155
by Robert B. White
18 / Observations on Paranoia and their Relationship to the Schreber Case, 159
by Arthur C. Carr
19 / A Note on Soul Murder
Vampire Fantasies, 163
by Merl M. Jackel
Epilogue, 165

Bibliography for Part III, 175

Index, 177
List of Illustrations

Figure 1 I Apparatus constructed to maintain perfect posture in the sleeping child,

page 52
Figure 2 I Same apparatus as in Figure 1 in use, page 52
Figure 3 I Geradehalter, a device designed to ensure rigidly erect sitting posture,
page 53
Figure 4 I Practical applications of the Geradehalter, page 53
Figure 5 Geradehalter with head belts, page 54
Figure 6 Kopfhalter (head holder), page 54
Figure 7 Physical exercise, Die BrOcke (the bridge), page 54
Figure 8 Anatomical illustrations showing inner body organs, page 55
Figure 9 Illustrations of individual organs, page 55
Figure 10 I Iron braces used to prevent or correct bowed leg deformity, page 81
Figure 11 I "Little men" having "multiple heads," page 95
Figure 12 Dr. Paul Theodor Flechsig in his office, page 105
Figure 13 Painting by a male patient with paranoid fantasies, page 112
Figures 14-18 I Anti-masturbation devices, pages 169-171
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Acknowledgments

First of all, I wish to thank my wife, Jacqueline, for her constant encourage·
ment, valuable counsel, and active as well as tireless cooperation, as editor, in
preparing this book.
Several other persons have been helpful, among whom I mention Drs.
Jacob A. Arlow, Robert C. Bak, and Norman Reider. I also am indebted to
Mary J. Crowther and Lucy Freeman for their interest and helpful advice.
I wish to thank a number of authors and publishers for permission to reo
print various papers, or excerpts thereof, in particular Drs. Arthur C. Carr,
Maurits Katan, and Robert B. White. Their articles appeared originally in:
The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, The International Journal oj Psycho·Analysis,
The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, and the Journal of the American Psy·
choanalytic Association.

xi
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Introduction

To this day, Freud's most important contribution to the psychoanalytic

exploration of psychotic illness is his penetrating study of the Schreber case.
No adequate appraisal of Freud's work is possible unless one considers
that in the opening years of our century psychology and psychiatry, in their
approach to the nature, origin, and treatment of mental illness, had reached
an impasse. In 1906 Paul Mobius, professor of psychiatry at the University of
Heidelberg, had written a book entitled The Hopelessness of All Psychology.
Occasional efforts to enter what was then thought to be the private life of a
human being-that is, his innermost feelings and fantasies-were dismissed
as "toying with thoughts." Apart from psychological speculations, at times
intuitive and searching, no scientific attempt had been made to explore in
depth the verbal outpourings of mentally ill people, let alone the written self·
revelations of a psychotic patient who had recorded his apparently incom-
prehensible experiences, persecutory fears, and tormenting delusions in an
extraordinary autobiographical memoir.
"Word salad" (plain or copious gibberish) was a favorite term used to
designate, indeed dismiss, what appeared to be a mixture of rambling speech,
unintelligible and loquacious talk, grotesque accusations, and alliterative
nonsense so often employed by such patients. Most pre-Freudian psychiatrists
and psychologists found all this fatiguing, and the patient who persisted in
his verbal outpourings and bizarre mannerisms soon became a bore.
Then, in 1911, Freud published his famous "Psycho-Analytic Notes upon
an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia," derived from his study
of the autobiography mentioned above. In this work he analyzed the patient's
mental productions, which he recognized as a complex network of ideas,
memories, fantasies, sensations, conflicts, complaints, unfulfilled wishes, actual
or fantasied experiences, the unraveling of which brought to light the connec-
tive lines between the past and present, the individual's personal history and
his current psychological state (or illness). Indeed, expert unraveling and
interpreting enabled Freud to understand, and to make others understand, the
deeper meaning of those seemingly incoherent ramblings, irrational modes
of expression, and other manifestations of seriously disturbed mental patients.
One such patient was Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911). He had been
xiii
xiv / Introduction

a distinguished jurist In the erstwhile kingdom of Saxony and in 1893 had

been promoted to the high office of Senatsprlisident in Dresden, that is,
president of the kingdom's Superior Court of Appeals. Shortly after his
assumption of the presidency, Schreber fell ill with a mental disease diagnosed
as paranoia, which caused his confinement in a mental institl,ltion for almost
nine years. During the last years of his hospital stay, in 1900 or so, Schreber,
who had been making copious notes on his mental and physical state during
the early years of his disease, began to write a book on his illness and the
many strange inner experiences he suffered with it~that is, a book on the
condition which had necessitated his hospitalization from 1893 to 1902. After
his discharge from the hospital, Schreber published his book. It appeared in
Leipzig (Saxony), in 1903, under the title Denkwurdigkeiten eines N erven·
kranken (Memoirs of a Mental Patient), hereinafter referred to as the
Memoirs.
In this extraordinary book. the man who had been the presiding judge of
the Saxonian Superior Court described in great detail not only his life in
various mental institutions~indeed, during his many years of confinement
he had been in three such places, all in Saxony~but also his tortured psyche
before and during his illness. It is a frank, albeit garbled, story of a para·
noiac's troubled mind, including the multiple symptoms, distressing delusions,
fearful sensations, and other afflictions by which he was tortured. Schreber's
original account was so frank that certain passages and one whole chapter of
his manuscript were deleted as "unfit" for publication even before the book
could appear in print; so frank, moreover, that many copies of the book
were bought up and destroyed by the Schreber family after its publication.
The few copies of the original Memoirs that remained attracted, of course,
wide attention in psychiatric circles. One of these copies came into Freud's
possession in Vienna in 1910 through the efforts of a Dresden physician, Dr.
Stegmann, who also communicated to Freud the patient's age at the outbreak
of the second illness: 51 years.
In the Memoirs Schreber also disclosed that in 1884-85~that is, nine
years before the outbreak of his second (and lasting) disease-he had suf·
fered from a mental disorder then called hypochondriasis, which had in·
capacitated him for several months. He recovered from this first illness in a
relatively short time and in his book he referred to it only in passing.
In reading Schreber's involuted, redundant, and often grotesque account,
Freud soon found that it offered much that was interesting and illuminating.
He later called it an "invaluable book" (1923). Freud refers to his work on
the Memoirs in some of his 1910 correspondence. In a letter to Karl Abraham,
dated December 16, 1910, for example, he writes: " ... my own work, just
finished, is on Schreber's book and tries to solve the riddle of paranoia...."
From the time of its appearance in 1911 and continuing up to the present,
Freud's analytic study of the Memoirs has aroused admiration and consensus
on the one hand, and disapprobation and controversy on the other. The most
 Introduction I xv

frequent objection has been that in analyzing Schreber's psychosis, Freud

wrote about a patient he had never seen. In anticipation of just such criticism,
Freud made it.clear that in working on Schreber's Memoirs he had applied
his previous clinical experiences with paranoid individuals and, in addition,
had found in Schreber's autobiographical account those very data which
could well take the place of direct and personal contact with the patient.
Freud's Schreber analysis was a seminal event. It became the forerunner
of numerous related studies in the broad area of paranoid conditions. The
professional and nonprofessional literature on the subject is voluminous in-
deed. It is significant, therefore, that Freud repeatedly emphasized that he
had used "a policy of restraint" in his work on the Memoirs and had limited
himself exclusively to their interpretation, with the exception of one single
fact: the patient's age when he fell ill for the second time. Freud also recog-
nized that with the publication of his monograph, the investigation of the
Schreber case was far from over. He suggested that analysts should trace
countless details of the case history to their spedfic sources. He himself later
added further comments to his Schreber analysis: a postscript, in 1912; in
his paper "On Narcissism," in 1914; in his discussion of "A Neurosis of
Demoniacal Possession in the Seventeenth Century," in 1923; and in the
monograph "The Ego and the Id," in 1927.'
The studies by Freud on paranoia as such predate as well as postdate his
Schreber analysis by many years. They go back to January, 1895, when he
sent a lengthy note on the topic to his friend Wilhelm Fliess, and continue
virtually to the end of his life in 1939, when he wrote his essays "Construc-
tions in Analysis" and "An Outline of Psychoanalysis."
A number of psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and psychologists have sub-
sequently contributed to the literature on the Schreber case. I shall refer to
these writings in the present volume; some, whole or excerpted, are included
in Part III.
My own research on the Schreber case began in 1951 with the publication
of the first of several papers on the famous patient. This work proceeded
through 1971-72, when I served as moderator of a panel on the Schreber
case at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association In
Washington, D.C.
The material is derived from my study of the following sources:
1. Schreber's Memoirs in the original German (Leipzig, 1903) and some of his
unpublished, personal writings (letters and poems) in my possession
2. Numerous books, papers, and pamphlets of Schreber's father, Daniel Gottlieb
Moritz Schreber, in the original German, published between lR39 and 1883, as
well as an unpublished letter of one of Schreber, Jr.'s sisters
3. Biographical writings in the original German on Schreber's father, beginning
with L. M. Politzer (1861) and E. Mangner (1876) lip to A. Ritter (1936)
and contemporary authors
1 The original version, Das lch und das Es, appeared in 1923.
xvi I Introduction

4. Correspondence and personal interviews with a surviving member of the

Schreber family in Germany2
5. Correspondence with Dr. K. Schilling (Verden, West Germany) and F. von
Lepel (Berlin) erstwhile president and member, respectively, of some
local chapters of the German Schreber associations (Schreber Vereine)
6. Freud's Schreber analysis (1911)
7. Various scientific papers and an autobiographical fragment by Dr. Paul
Theodor Flechsig, the psychiatrist of Schreber, during the latter's first illness
and the early months of his second illness
8. Correspondence and personal interviews with Dr. F. Baumeyer who, between
1946 and 1949, was psychiatrist·in·charge of a hospital near Dresden (Saxony)
and found the medical case records of Schreber's confinements in a mental in·
stitution (Sonnenstein sanatorium)
9. Methodical personal research in archives in Germany and elsewhere, on the
basis of which the genealogical tables of the Schreber family and other
authentic data pertaining to the case history were developed.
All the above material, collected during the course of my investigation and
supplemented by further research, has enabled me to gain access to and
reconstruct essential facts of Schreber's early life and development. It has also
thrown light on numerous details and obscurities in Schreber's case history.
And finally, of utmost importance, it has made it possible to correlate the
bizarre mental formations in Schreber's delusional system (including florid
fantasies, distorted images, hallucinatory experiences) to specific events in
the early father·son relationship and thus to demonstrate the nucleus of truth
in the son's paranoid productions.
Mentally ill people have always been "aliens" to fellow men not thus af·
flicted. The autobiography of Daniel Paul Schreber, a full-scale psychiatric
expose written by the patient himself and therefore not subject to the restric-
tions observed by physicians in accordance with medical ethics, will help the
reader to view the considerable abnormality of such a man as less foreign
and his personality as more human.
Through many centuries, and during the Dark Ages in particular. mental
patients \\ere thought to be possessed by the Devil or evil spirits. The pre-
vailing cure consisted in expelling the Devil through exorcism or related ef-
forts. Schreber's explicit ideas about soul murder, soul voluptuousness, and
the ceaseless influx of rays into his body I see pp. 16-20) suggest the presence
of similar notions in the patient. As our brief survey of the history of para-
noia (Chapter 5) indicates, the emergence of exorcistic tendencies and pro-
cedures points to a revival of this type of thinking in our time.
"I wish to express my gratitude to Mrs. F. H. (Germany) for her helpful cooperation.
 PART I
BACKGROUND
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1 I Who Was
Daniel Paul Schreber?

The man who was to become "the most frequently quoted patient" (76) in
modern psychiatry, was born in Leipzig, Germany, on July 25,1842. On both
his father's and his mother's side, he was the descendant of illustrious
families, members of which had distinguished themselves in academic, cul-
tural, and social activities of various kinds, especially in science and medicine.
Two of Schreber's paternal ancestors, Daniel Gottfried Schreber (1708-
1777) and his son (the patient's great-uncle) Johann Christian Daniel von
Schreber (1739-1810), knighted for his scientific achievements, held im-
portant positions at German universities and made notable contributions to
biology, zoology,' botany, agriculture, history, and other fields of knowledge.
The following genealogical table lists some of his m~ternal and paternal
forebears. The patient was extremely proud of his ancestry and references to
it appear, often camouflaged or delusionally distorted, in various sections of
the Memoirs.
From this table, the reader can readily see that Schreber's pride in
his lineage was well·founded. However, the megalomanic elaboration of this
fierce pride during his illness led him into such grandiose fabrications as
transforming the name of his paternal grandmother into Frederick the Great
(in German, Friedrich der Grosse), or thinking of himself as the descendant
of the imaginary "Margraves of Tuscany and Tasmania."
The greatest impact on the son was made by his charismatic father, Dr.
Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber, whose influence persists in Germany and
German-speaking parts of central Europe up to the present. In fact, every
German knows the word Schrebergarten (Schreber garden) and many use
the verb schrebern as a synonym for gardening. Very few, however, connect
these terms with the name of the man who created the Schreber movement
and whose teachings inspired the development of the Schreber gardens as
well as the Schreber Vereine, associations devoted to the methodical cultiva-
tion of activities in fresh air, gymnastics, gardening, calisthenics, and sport.
Some excerpts from an article in the New Yorker, of September 19, 1959,

10n display in the Museum of Natural History (New York) is a specimen of canis
lycaon Schreberi, the gray Eastern timber wolf, classified and described by Johann
Christian Daniel von Schreber.
3