Memoirs of My Nervous Illness

by Daniel Paul Schreber, Ida Macalpine, Richard A. Hunter

In 1884, the distinguished German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber suffered the first of a series of mental collapses that would afflict him for the rest of his life. In his madness, the world was revealed to him as an enormous architecture of nerves, dominated by a predatory God. It became clear to Schreber that his personal crisis was implicated in what he called a "crisis in God's realm," one that had transformed the rest of humanity into a race of fantasms. There was only one remedy; as his doctor noted: Schreber "considered himself chosen to redeem the world, and to restore to it the lost state of Blessedness. This, however, he could only do by first being transformed from a man into a woman...."

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Mental Health, German Literature, Mental Illness

455 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1903

About the author

Daniel Paul Schreber was a German judge who suffered from what was then diagnosed as dementia praecox. He described his second mental illness (1893–1902), making also a brief reference to the first illness (1884–1885) in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (original German title: Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken). Memoirs became an influential book in the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis thanks to its interpretation by Sigmund Freud. There is no personal account of his third illness (1907–1911), but some details about it can be found in the Hospital Chart (in Appendix to Henry Zvi Lothane's book, In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry). 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).

Reviews

[Durakov · Rating 5 out of 5]

WHAT THEY WILL SAY

'The "Memoirs" are the repetitive ramblings of a madman with no bearing in Reality... his thoughts...his perceptions... his hallucinations"

WHAT REALLY IS

A text that is no "memoir of a nervous illness" at all, but, as the original German title and subtitle (which is not translated) makes indisputably clear: These are "The Great Thoughts of a Nervous Patient with an addendum concerning the question whether or not one may be held in an asylum against their professed will." The given translation alters the entire meaning of what follows, forcing it into the modern box of "mental illness autobiography." This text was meant above all to challenge the legal decision that made Schreber essentially an incompetent child in the eyes of the law, and should be read as such, i.e. as a juridical critique.

WHAT THEY WILL SAY

Schreber was so insane, he believed himself to be a woman

WHAT REALLY IS

A remarkable account of a gender transition in the most stifling of environments, the asylum. A judge, over fifty, who decides to become a woman despite her time, her captors, her awareness that she would be labeled insane.

WHAT THEY WILL SAY

Schreber believed himself to be accosted by non-persons, screamed alone and chanted that he was "the first leper corpse"

WHAT REALLY IS

Flechsig, her psychiatrist, was among the forerunners of the scientific revolution in late 19th century psychiatry who issued what he called his "Leichenpolitik" or "corpse policy," reflecting his belief that the primary course for contemporary psychiatry was to examine the dead bodies of lunatics and find the truth of their ailment. Schreber was quite literally correct: Flechsig had reduced him and others labeled mad to their posthumous value. As living persons, they were worthless; as cadavers, they held valuable secrets.

This book is nearly impossible to read because of all the slander and tropes piled atop it. Read it fresh without assuming that Schreber will reveal to you the truth of insanity and you will discover the real beauty of her world.

I, for one, count myself among Schreber's tainted children, and, if you read the text without prejudice, you may find you are too.

[Heronimo Gieronymus · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was alas not by way of Freud that I first came across the legendary Judge Schreber, perhaps history's most analyzed psychotic, but rather, being the dissolute young connoisseur of radical theoretical guerilla action that I once was, through Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's ANTI-OEDIPUS: CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA. Judge Schreber appears in ANTI-OEDIPUS as a meritorious early example of the (post)modern schizo. Deleuze and Guattari advocate for the schizo (which is never the same thing exactly as extolling the virtue of your everyday clinical schizophrenic). They celebrate modes of experience which explode the binary apparatus, pursue startling lines of flight, precipitate nomadic cartographies, and manifestly disrupt conventions inherent to social assemblages. In his work with and without Guattari, Deleuze frequently extolled the value of creativity and creation. The schizo creates a world and with a world, always against the grain of the dominant rational (social) order. If ANTI-OEDIPUS is distinguished by its unstinting assault on Freud's persistence in territorializing the delusional psyche around a regimented system of entrenched clinicized mythology (especially the daddy-mommy-me assemblage at the heart of the Oedipus complex), some of us who have read the CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA books will be reminded by Rosemary Dinnage, in her introduction to the New York Review Books edition of Schreber's MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS, that Deleuze and Guattari nevertheless continue to operate in debt to Freud: it was the father of psychoanalysis who first introduced the idea of "Wahnbildungsarbeit," which essentially imparts the principle of an active process at the heart of the "work of delusion-formation" allowing the psychotic person to integrate delusion into an overarching picture of the world. This is a concept that Dinnage avers would have been completely alien to the medical professionals, some very schooled indeed, who oversaw Schreber's care in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. I recall Deleuze and Guattari writing rapturously about Schreber's "solar anus," insisting that this hallucinated holy orifice is just as much of reality as is anything else. Imagine my surprise now at having finally gotten around to MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS and discovering that among the prodigious inventory of marvels on display nary a single instance of rays emerging from the judge's posterior is to be accounted for, though the poor man is indeed endlessly assailed by said rays. Perhaps Deleuze and Guattari got the memoirs mixed up with Georges Bataille, who did indeed write a marvelous essay entitled "The Solar Anus." It seems to me to bear noting, probably because I very recently read it, that MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS also has some points of curious intersection with Bataille's essay "Sacrificial Mutilation and the Severed Ear of Vincent Van Gogh." Van Gogh also spent time in Asylums, occasionally extremely far gone, and suffered a tormented, obsessive relationship with the sun. When I read the CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA books as a young man I had no firsthand experience of psychosis. That was to change. You see, I suffer from bipolar disorder with psychotic features. I experienced periodic psychosis in my twenties and two prolonged full-fledged psychotic episodes (resulting in hospitalization) more harrowing I am certain than anybody who has never experienced such things can possibly imagine. I, of course, having plenty of reason to be grateful that, unlike in the case of Daniel Paul Schreber, no psychotic episode I experienced became broadly progressive, going on for years and years, almost entirely determining the character of my life. I do, however, know what it is like to hear voices and completely believe in their realness. Schreber heard many voices. Many, many voices. The voices in large part provided for him a rich lexicon to accompany the overwhelming nervous phenomena from which he could not extricate himself. Here is a list of terms the voices habitually utilized: The Order of the World, nerve-contact, nerve-language, soul-language, soul murder, soul-voluptuousness, the Eternal Jew, unmanning, rays, “forecourts of heaven,” fleeting-improvised-men, “little men” (“hundreds if not thousands” of "little men" a few millimetres in height living briefly on Schreber's head and later in his body), the seer of spirits, Prince of Hell, Divine Judgment, “the cursed play-with-human-beings,” “new human beings out of Schreber’s spirit,” tying-to-celestial-bodies, writing-down-system, listening-in-thought, “the cursed creation-of-a-false-feeling,” the head-compressing-machine miracle, the so-what-party, the bellowing-miracle, the cries of help, birds created by miracle, “the capacity to answer at first sight,” spontaneous generation, frightening miracle, automatic-remembering-thought. This is simply a compressed list of some of the building blocks with which the ill Schreber rebuilt his world. I especially relate to the fleeting-improvised-men. I associate with the onset of psychosis people who are there and then just suddenly magically not. At his most unwell Schreber believed that The Order of the World was so utterly in a state of abject strife that no living humans currently occupied it save himself, and that all people with whom he communicated were fleeting-improvised. Schreber believed himself in contact with God. At all times. But God, you see, was two. Upper God (Ariman) and Lower God (Ormuzd). He believed himself immortal, by virtue of the attraction he exerted on God, souls, and rays, but also subject to endless miracles of infirmity. At times he believed himself to have both Leprosy and the bubonic plague. Because of his hyper-attraction to souls, “scorpions” were put in his head: “tiny crab- or spider-like structures which were to carry out some work of destruction in my head.” They were divided into Aryan and Catholic scorpions. Schreber believes the “holiness” of his “purpose” saved him from serious compromise as regards the scorpions (and all other physical adversities). Central to Schreber's delusion-formation was the belief that he was (unmanning) being turned into a woman so he could be impregnated in order to repopulate the world and restore the beyond to a condition of blessedness. Souls won't leave Schreber alone. Especially, it would seem, the soul of Flechsig, the man who happened to oversee the first of the Asylums where Schreber found himself constrained, and who could mess with the judge without necessarily having to be in the same room. Two Asylums and many years later: Flechsig continues to pester. Daniel Paul Schreber was a man of culture and considerable learning. Many of his faculties had returned commandingly to him by the time he penned his memoirs (in his third Asylum). He was the son of a kind of proto-Nazi Doctor Spock, a man who wrote child-rearing books focused on the importance of extremely regimented discipline. (His other brother committed suicide). A man of great discipline and never especially religious, Schreber's delusional conception of himself as the centre of cosmic (and explicitly divine) miracles can only appear fascinating and novel in the extreme, especially as it engenders the staunchest form of faith and something like an intricate theology. He writes almost soberly and with complete clarity about his experiences. He believed himself to be the most important person in the history of mankind from both a religious and scientific standpoint. This, he explains, is why he endeavoured to produce the memoirs (not without some reluctance): “it need hardly be said," he states early on, "what incalculable gain it would be for mankind if, through my personal fate, particularly as it will be shaped in the future, the foundation of mere materialism and of hazy pantheism would once and for all be demolished.” Nobody has known God like he has know God. One cannot be miserly with such foundational knowledge. MEMOIRS OF MY NERVOUS ILLNESS does not consist of the memoirs alone (nor is the extra material confined to a number Postscripts he wrote prior to its original publication). In the back end of the present volume things get truly fascinating, almost shockingly so. You see, we are also treated to legal documents germane to Schreber's efforts to free himself from tutelage in order to be granted control of his own affairs (and to possibly be released from the Asylum). All of a sudden, in the five addenda with which it terminates, the book treats us to a captivating courtroom drama. Schreber himself deploying absolutely unimpeachable legalistic rhetoric whilst at the same time remaining steadfast in his convictions regarding the legitimacy of his spiritual insights is some of the most amazing shit I have ever read. And, my God, friend: the court's immaculately considered final decision on the case brings the fucking house down. This house at any rate. So, uh, what else to say? Extremely strongly recommended.

[Paola · Rating 5 out of 5]

Se volete sapere cosa passa e succede nella testa di uno psicotico dovete leggere questo libro perché ve lo descrive minuziosamente.
- Schizofrenia paranoide
- dispercezioni corporeee
- delirio mistico
- allucinazioni visive e uditive, tattili e gustative e olfattive
- delirio paranoide e di persecuzione...
il tutto strutturato magnificamente e scritto in maniera chiara e concisa da una persona estremamente intelligente e con un'ottima cultura classica e non solo.
Notevole, da usare come libro di testo per futuri professionisti del settore, spiega e chiarisce meglio di qualsiasi manuale di psichiatria...

[Samuel Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

What Schreber's account shows is that any of us are a neurological dice roll away from a multi-year psychotic break.

Amazing, too, that after a century, the rise of psychoanalysis, CBT, various classes of anti-psychotics we are little better at treating mental illness. The best tack then seemed to be, 'keep them in an asylum' and now it's 'let them roam the streets'.

The translation and structure are great. I appreciated all the legal notes at the end, but only read a portion of them, though these would probably be of more interest for someone with an interest in madness and law. The doctor's (brief) account of Schreber's external behavior is very interesting, to see what the patient includes/omits in his own account.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

If Schreber had had a youtube channel he'd be running the world right now.

The memoirs are already infamous for the revelations of delusion, but they are nonetheless a bit of a chore to read. Schreber's explanations always come down to his own certitude of what he has perceived and experienced, i.e., "I know this sounds crazy BUT I cannot mistaken." As for the description of his holy system and its interconnected tiers of demands, the moment you find yourself checking them for consistency is the moment you've been had. What unfolds is a process of limitless rationalization of the irrational. So in other words a true life story.

And that is why reading this hallucinatory confessional is so disturbing: if not for the first time in history, then in the most indelible manner, it demonstrates the easy coexistence of raving lunacy alongside (nearly!) flawless day-to-day functionality. I had thought that I would skip reading the appendixes but they happen to be well-chosen and exemplary. The verdict which liberates Schreber condemns us all to morbid uncertainty, not because we are surrounded by fleeting-improvised-men, but because you have no idea what fucking insane shit the people closest to you are capable of believing.

[Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

this book is pretty good if you have an interest in severe mental illness. it's a personal account of years spent in a mental institution. a more legit review from brainwashed.com is below:
In 1893, after having served as a judge, he fell ill at the age of 51. Diagnosed as a paranoiac, he spent the next seven years in an asylum, early on mute before the assaults of his hallucinations and only gradually returning to speech with revelations of his bizarre and overwhelming religious experiences. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, republished by New York Review Books, is his account of those events and written with full confidence in the truth of his visions. Schreber's problem was God. As his visions showed him, God was a vast net of nerve fibers, all taken from the human corpses, cleansed and raised to blessedness. But sometime in the past, one of these nervous souls committed soul murder and the result upset the Order of the World, causing his own ailment. He believed himself to be unique in the history of the earth in exerting an unnatural attraction upon God, whose rays reached down from the stars to lodge themselves in his body. The more they did so, the more feminized he became. And the more female he became, the more he had to worry that God intended to change his sex altogether, then humiliate and rape him, so he could give birth to a new race. He argues with the sun and receives messages from birds; voices shout at him constantly, as God, hoping to sever contact with Schreber, tries to make him completely demented. God "did not really understand the living human being and had no need to understand him, because, according to the Order of the World, He dealt only with corpses." God perpetually afflicts Schreber, pouring corpse juice into his brain, and much as he realizes the absurdity of saying it, Schreber must admit that everything that happens is in reference to him, from the insects that pester him when he closes his eyes to the "bellowing-miracle" which explodes his fits of soul-voluptuousness. He writes rationally and clearly, taking dictation from the voices in his head: "Bad news came in from all sides that even this or that star or group of stars had to be 'given up'; at one time it was said that even Venus had been 'flooded,' at another that the whole solar system would now have to be 'disconnected,' that the Cassopeia (the whole group of stars) had had to be drawn together into a single sun, that perhaps only the Pleiades could still be saved. . . ." One of his doctors figures as an especially malevolent presence, perhaps the original soul murderer, in any case now a diabolical figure trying to wrest souls from God to gain power, while poor Schreber gets in the way. The world he constructs is coherent and gloriously imaginative, sometimes beautiful and often horrifying. It is a madness which has long struggled with and finally found its voice.

[Steve Rauscher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow, this one took a little longer than I anticipated. Memoirs is simultaneously one of the most amazing books I've ever read and one of the most grueling feats of mental fortitude I've ever subjected myself to. To read a first-person account of a prominent man's fall into schizophrenia and ensuing lifestyle is spellbinding, but to do so in a translation of German written in an archaic 1900-ish style is mind-numbing. This book, for the curious individual, is equal parts enlightenment and torture. It challenges the reader's perception of perception while making him or her doubt their decision to read it in the first place. By all means, read this work if you've ever harbored even the slightest interest in the inner workings of the human mind. But be warned: it's going to take a little while.

[Michele Giacomini · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decisamente il libro più strano che abbia mai letto.

[heather · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, it's weird that I reread this book in bed. It's on my nightstand book shelf. It's a huge chunk of eerily sensible ramblings by a man confined to an insane asylum in nineteenth century german, studied by Freud: the book that launched a thousand psychoanalysts into Eames chairs.

I was drawn to it because I have a compulsive interest in the history of medicine and the history of insanity. I was fed too much Foucault and Zoloft as a child. I read it in bed because, for its size, it's immensely pick-up-able.

[Samuel Ch. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me recomendaron este libro bajo la siguiente premisa:

Este libro es la declaración de un hombre que asegura ser la esposa de Dios, es un doctor en psiquiatría quien relata aquí su relación con lo espiritual, cómo lo hemos malentendido todo y por qué es el ser vivo más importante sobre la tierra.

Por supuesto, un libro de este tamaño iba a ser difícil de leer. No lo es por lo denso del contenido sino por lo denso del libro en sí. Es extenso y cuesta trabajo de darle seguimiento si como yo tienes poco tiempo para continuar la lectura.

Su hilo, aunque interesante, es fácil de enredar. Es un texto que merece un estudio profundo y definitivamente más gente debería leerlo, aunque sea en fragmentos sueltos y descoordinados como tuve que hacerlo yo.

Siento que lo que aquí escriba no sería justo para el libro, porque hice una lectura apresurada y sin ánimos de absorber, pero es buenísimo para sentirse impresionado por los delirios de un enfermo de lucidez como el doctor Paul Schreber.
En definitiva es un libro impresionante, que me queda muy grande, pero toda persona interesada en la relación entre lo espiritual y lo psiquiátrico le gustará mogollón.

[Andrew]

I've had a much more up-close-and-personal look at schizophrenia than a lot of people, and hearing Herr Schreber-- a man who tried to organize all of his psychotic experiences into a coherent theological and philosophical system-- explain his experiences this icily has a dual effect. On the one hand, I certainly don't feel like I understand his condition much better, and while the connections he makes are rather interesting, a lot of the "miracles" he describes are a little like hearing someone else's dream. You weren't there and can't really understand it. On the other hand, it is fascinatingly weird from a narrative and novelistic perspective that hits a lot of the same points the symbolists were doing at the time, and presaging what the surrealists would be doing a bit later.

[Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Schreber was right.

[Nora · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Yo pertenezco al número de los hombres cultos, no al de los locos."

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1884, the distinguished German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber suffered the first in a series of mental collapses. This book is the notes he wrote about his state of mind. The world was revealed to him as a huge complex of nerves, dominated by a predatory God.

He was born in 1842 and became a lawyer, then a judge. He married but the couple had no children of their own. He had his first breakdown at the age of 42, and recovered. Then in 1893 when he was 51 he became mentally unwell and went to hospital for about nine years, then he was released to live with his wife and adopted daughter for a couple of years. He then spent the rest of his life in an asylum, dying in 1911.

I found this book a tough read. The book is mainly about the author describing his odd, delusionary world. For example, he sees himself at times as physically being a woman.

This book was first published in 1903.

[Orçun Güzer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boşverin Freud'un, Jung'un, Lacan'ın, psikiyatri tarihinin en ünlü psikotiğinin hatıratını nasıl yorumladıklarını; önce Schreber'in kendisine kulak verin. Ne engin bir hayal aleminde yaşadığını, kafasının içinde nasıl bir bilim-kurgusal-teolojik-mistik bir sistem kurduğunu görün. Kendiyle nasıl mücadele ettiğine, paranoya tanısını kabul etmese de, patolojik durumu hakkındaki öz-farkındalığına tanıklık edin. Ve en önemlisi, yazma tutkusuna, her ayrıntıyı yazıya dökme sabrına, kişisel tarihindeki dağılmış olayları birbirine bağlama çabasına hayran olun.

Kolay bir okuma değildi, ama okudukça daha çok okuyasım geldi. Kitapta Schreber'in üç ayrı akıl hastanesine yayılan psikotik deneyimleri ve bunlara yüklediği anlamı içeren hatırat, ona eklediği denemeleri, delilik ve kapatılma konusuna hukuki açıdan yaklaşan bir makalesi (kendisi bir hukuk doktoruymuş) ve vesayetini almak için giriştiği hukuk mücadelesinin belgeleri yer alıyor. Rosemary Dinnage'ın önsöz yazısı da çok zihin açıcıydı.

[Cesare Cantelli]

Sospeso

[Chase · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading the memoirs of a schizophrenic is about as fun as it sounds. Though Schreber constructs an interesting cosmology that influenced both Deleuze and Jung, the text itself is very repetitive and nearly unreadable. I skimmed through the post-script section and the case files compiled in the appendix...Now be gone ye fleeting-improvised-men!

[Carrie Poppy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike anything else.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel Paul Schreber was an eminent German judge who suffered two devastating mental breakdowns, the first in 1884 and the second in 1894, resulting in him spending years in various asylums. In 1903, he published these Memoirs, detailing the nature of his illness with all its physical and mental manifestations, and a complex belief system in which these symptoms are a product of God’s particular designs for Schreber himself. These memoirs drew the attention of Freud and others, and provide a fascinating personal view of mental illness.

Schreber’s delusions as presented in the memoirs are complex and challenging to follow. He has a system of terms to explain his world view, talking of nerves and souls and miracles, but these terms have a particular meaning outside the commonly understood ones. Schreber sees himself as the chosen one who can redeem the world by reaching a state of Blessedness, through his own transformation into a woman. It is quite striking and even disconcerting to note such clarity and logical structure in arguments that are based on severe delusions.

Schreber also describes his insomnia, the voices that disturb him constantly and the inability of quieting his mind. He shouts out (he calls this ‘bellowing’), grimaces and is even violent, but this is all attributed to a force outside himself. The examples Schreber gives are vivid and memorable, such as believing that fellow patients have exchanged heads, or his furious insistence (recognised as another delusion by the reader) that he was not responsible for breaking his piano strings through constant banging on the piano.

The appendices to the main work are reports from the legal case when Schreber was trying to remove himself from tutelage and become responsible for his own affairs - this was rather repetitive and for me didn’t add much to the memoirs.

This work is seen as important in the world of psychology, particularly as it was examined by Freud in his The Schreber Case. I found it incredibly compelling, but at the same time felt uncomfortable at seeing this intelligent and articulate man exposing the details of his illness to a public that has a very different perspective on them. It was saddening that he couldn’t receive more help with his delusions and had to go through so much anguish and suffering.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book about what it's actually like to go crazy!

I love this book. Essential if you have ever experienced anything like this, neurotic, psychotic, or otherwise.

Check out the book by Kurt Vonnegut's son too along the same lines. Eden Express?

Can't think of any others like this offhand.

Although at the time people Mark Vonnegut had schizophrenia, his illness looks like some sort of manic psychosis as part of a psychotic bipolar disorder. Much of what was formerly schizophrenia has gone over to psychotic mood disorder as in psychotic depression and psychotic bipolar disorder.

This happened in 1980. There was great hue and cry raised at the time from folks invested in the Greater Schizophrenia concept, but it has since died down. Around the same time, the concepts of pseudoneurotic schizophrenia and borderline schizophrenia have gone over to schizotypal personality disorder and borderline personality disorder.

That's a good change as those two borderland states were always very poorly defined. Indeed the very concept of borderline states is a bit hazy.

That said, there are some non-psychotic illnesses that can look very much like a psychosis even though they are not. Virulent OCD is a good example. Anorexia, body dysmorphic disorder and the non-anxious form of hypochondrias look very much like psychoses. People with borderline and schizotypal PD's have mini-psychosis as part of the general picture of the disorder.

Diagnostic confusion is very common in illnesses like this and even good clinicians are misdiagnosing a lot of people. Psychiatric diagnosis is still more art than science and until we get to where we can diagnose by some concrete biological test as with a physical illness, we will diagnose on symptoms and that's always hazy, subjective, and mostly intuitive and Gestalt-like. All of those adjectives describe things that while useful for analysis of reality, are considered to be outside of the scientific method. The more you drift away from science, the more error steps in as a logical and expected consequence.

Like with most human problems, there are no good solutions or even ways of bettering the matter here, though the progressive changes of the DSM have required more and more science in order to justify the existences of disorders and their symptoms. This is a step in the right direction.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very very interesting book. The guy who wrote it, being a schizophrenic, shows us with this book how productive is the unconscious.
However, if you are not profesionally interesting in studying schizophrenia, this book is thrilling for a few chapters. The rest follows the same
path - rich schizophrenic and paranoid connections and apparently logical links concerning god, the pure rays, some doctors, devil. And after each chapter one wonders disconcertedly - what the fuck have I just read. the frustration is big, because our somehow rational logical minds try to make sense of the stuff Judge Schreber is mumbling about.

[Steven · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too schizophrenically and religiously insane to persevere with - sad to read a great intellect wrestling with its own insanity and trying to make sense of it all.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by an accomplished and respected German jurist, Memoirs is part of a long appeal against an official, court-sanctioned decision to incarcerate the author in a public mental asylum. It consists mostly of accounts of his time in mental hospitals but also includes (as addenda) the medical reports of doctors, as well as Schreber’s own arguments against his incarceration, on legal grounds.

Schreber understands the basis of his own plea: the laws of the Kingdom of Saxony do not specify the conditions that must preexist for a person officially diagnosed as mentally ill to be legally committed to a public asylum against his or her will. That is, the public asylums are provided by the state to care for the mentally ill, who may indeed pose a danger to themselves or others, but they are meant to be places citizens may avail themselves of if they so wish. They are not necessarily places to which such patients can be legally incarcerated in contravention of their express desires simply by virtue of a medical analysis.

Schreber demands to be released and returned to the care of his wife and family. Eventually, he is released from psychiatric hospitals, nearly a decade after first being committed, He resumes his profession for about five years until the death of his mother in 1907. Subsequently, he returns to a mental asylum, where he dies in 1911.

Diagnosed with the equivalent of paranoid schizophrenia (dementia praecox) in the 1890s, Schreber had experienced extreme alarm and anxiety at imagining one morning—just after waking—that he might enjoy sexual intercourse as a woman. He quickly concluded that this perverse thought must have had an external origin—that it had entered his mind from “outside”—and he began to believe that his primary psychiatrist, Prof. Paul Flechsig, had invaded his mind telepathically, making contact with his nerves via “divine rays.” These thoughts morphed into extreme delusions of grandeur, whereby Schreber became part of a “divine plan” in which hundreds of “souls” took immense interest in him, and God performed “miracles” on him using “fleeting-improvised-men.” These "fleeting-improvised-men" were "souls" who temporarily resided in the human body, and whose “miracles” (as far as Schreber was concerned) included torture.

Sigmund Freud (who never interviewed Schreber) argued that Schreber’s condition should have given rise to a new diagnosis—paranoid dementia—because dementia praecox could not account for all of Schreber’s experiences, including his evident ability to receive sexual gratification outside actual sexual experiences. He claimed that Schreber’s experiences were the result of repressed homosexual urges, which were projected onto the outside world causing intense hallucinations. Schreber accused Flechsig of attempting to murder his soul and change him into a woman. He also believed God and the “Order of the World” demanded that he be changed into a woman to become the object of God’s sexual desire.

There is little point trying to add substantially to the many reviews to which Memoirs of My Nervous Illness has been subjected since its first appearance over a hundred years ago. More helpful would be to include a few excerpts. In 1903, when Schreber had already been released from the asylums, he wrote a letter to Dr. Flechsig that included this passage:

I have not the least doubt that the first impetus to what my doctors always considered mere “hallucinations” but which to me signified communication with supernatural powers, consisted of influences on my nervous system emanating from your nervous system. How could this be explained? I think it is possible that you—at first as I am quite prepared to believe only for therapeutic purposes—carried on some hypnotic, suggestive, or whatever else one could call it, contact with my nerves, even while we were separated in space. During this contact you might suddenly have realized that other voices were speaking to me as well, pointing to a supernatural origin. Following this surprising realization you might have continued this contact with me for a time out of scientific interest, until you yourself felt as it were uneasy about it, and therefore decided to break it off. But it is possible that in this process a part of your own nerves—probably unknown to yourself—was removed from your body, a process explicable only in a supernatural manner, and ascended to heaven as a “tested soul” and there achieved some supernatural power. This “tested soul” still endowed with human faults like all impure souls—in accordance with the character of souls which I have come to know with certainty—then simply allowed itself to be driven by the impulse of ruthless self-determination and lust for power, without any restraint by something comparable to the moral will power of man, exactly in the same way as another “tested soul,” that of von W., as recorded in my “Memoirs.” It is possible therefore that all those things which in earlier years I erroneously thought I had to blame you for—particularly the definite damaging effects on my body—are to be blamed only on that “tested soul.” There would then be no need to cast any shadow upon your person and only the mild reproach would perhaps remain that you, like so many doctors, could not completely resist the temptation of using a patient in your care as an object of scientific experiments apart from the real purpose of cure, when by chance matters of the highest scientific interest arose. One might even raise the question whether perhaps all the talk of voices about somebody having committed soul murder can be explained by the souls (rays) deeming it impermissible that a person’s nervous system should be influenced by another’s to the extent of imprisoning his will power, such as occurs during hypnosis; in order to stress forcefully that this was a malpractice it was called “soul murder,” the souls for lack of a better term, using a term already in current usage, and because of their innate tendency to express themselves hyperbolically.

In the following passage, Schreber recounts a physical experience in one of the asylums:

About the fourth or fifth night after my admission to the Asylum, I was pulled out of bed by two attendants in the middle of the night and taken to a cell fitted out for dements (maniacs) to sleep in. I was already in a highly excited state, in a fever delirium so to speak, and was naturally terrified in the extreme by this event, the reasons for which I did not know. The way led through the billiard room; there, because I had no idea what one intended to do with me and therefore thought I had to resist, a fight started between myself clad only in a shirt, and the two attendants, during which I tried to hold fast to the billiard table, but was eventually overpowered and removed to the above-mentioned cell. There I was left to my fate; I spent the rest of the night mostly sleepless in this cell, furnished only with an iron bedstead and some bedding. Regarding myself as totally lost, I made a naturally unsuccessful attempt during the night to hang myself from the bedstead with the sheet. I was completely ruled by the idea that there was nothing left for a human being for whom sleep could no longer be procured by all the means of medical art, but to take his life. I knew that this was not permitted in Asylums, but I labored under the delusion that when all attempts to cure had been exhausted, one would be discharged—solely for the purpose of making an end to one’s life either in one’s own home or somewhere else.

Here is a passage from Schreber’s account of his many different mental experiences:

The miracles directed against my head and the nerves of my head happened in manifold ways. One attempted to pull the nerves out of my head, for a time even [during the nights] to transplant them into the head of M. who slept in the next room. These attempts caused [besides the fear of an actual loss of my nerves] an unpleasant tension in my head. However the pulling out succeeded only moderately, the staying power of my nerves proved the greater force and the half-pulled-out nerves always returned to my head after a short time. Serious devastation was caused in my head by the so-called “flights of rays,” a phenomenon difficult to describe, the effect of which was that my skull was repeatedly sawn asunder in various directions. I frequently had—and still have regularly daily—the sensation that my whole skull has temporarily thinned; in my opinion this was brought about through the bony material of my skull being partly pulverized by the destructive action of the rays; but it is restored again by pure rays particularly during sleep. One can form some picture of the disagreeable sensations these happenings cause if one considers that these are the rays of the whole world—somehow mechanically fastened at their point of issue—which travel around one single head and attempt to tear it asunder and pull it apart in a fashion comparable to quartering.

Freud’s theory about Schreber was later disputed and contested by prominent psychoanalysts, many of whom probably took the haughty attitude that Freud’s theories were outdated due to his lack of access to modern facilities. Yet Freud probably had a point. Schreber argues in the book that his illness is not “mental” but rather “nervous.” As strange as the contents of his Memoirs are, they are far from the kind of incoherence one might expect from a schizophrenic. If Schreber really did experience the tortures of the damned because of a fleeting “transsexual” thought one morning, it is unlikely the sum total of his experiences had no sociological source whatsoever, even if he were “mentally ill.” Can anyone seriously imagine a person in a Western country today experiencing such anguish?

We are now accustomed to effete Muslim suicide bombers such as Mohammed Atta and Salman Abedi taking out their repressed homosexuality by killing others to relieve their own inner torment. But Schreber began dealing with his inner demons at the end of the 19th century in Protestant Germany. Far more likely, Schreber’s torments were in no small part a product of his time, just as he and his parents were. This theory is only augmented by the fact that he returned to his work and performed normally after the period of his treatment in different mental asylums.

As Freud noted, “The wonderful Schreber … ought to have been made a professor of psychiatry and director of a mental hospital.” Indeed, it is not impossible that Schreber was faking the whole thing.

[Larry Ggggggggggggggggggggggggg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This guy was really ‘going through it’

[Acidula · Rating 2 out of 5]

Libro sicuramente interessantissimo, ma io l’ho trovato troppo pesante.
⭐️⭐️ 2 stelle solo per questo motivo

[Alessandro · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Le mie Memorie non sono state scritte per giovinette o collegiali; nessuna persona ragionevole mi vorrà quindi biasimare se non ho sempre azzeccato quel tono che le sensibili direttrici di collegio ritengono adatto per rivolgersi alle loro pupille. Chi vuole spianare la via a una nuova concezione religiosa dev'essere capace di parlare con parole infuocate, come quelle che Gesù Cristo usava nei confronti dei farisei o Lutero nei confronti del papa e dei potenti della terra"

"Per quanto riguarda invece il pericolo che la pubblicazione delle mie Memorie possa esporre o compromettere me stesso, ebbene accetto tale rischio con perfetta consapevolezza e tranquillità. La peggior cosa infatti che mi potrebbe capitare sarebbe di passare per squilibrato e questo è quanto già avviene"

"... in una certa occasione entrarono come anime nella mia testa, per trovare lì la loro fine, duecentoquaranta benedettini in una volta sola, sotto la guida di un padre il cui nome suonava come Starkiewicz"

[Amerynth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Daniel Paul Schreber's "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" is pretty fascinating. It is by no means an easy read, but I found it worthwhile and interesting.

Schreber, a well-respected judge, had a nervous breakdown, which has all the hallmarks of schizophrenia. "Memoirs" follows his time in the asylum and he vividly describes his hallucinations and delusions. He believes God talks to him and "nerves" or souls continually enter his body in an attempt to turn him into a woman. He is clearly logical and intelligent and "Memoirs" is his (ultimately successful) attempt to reason himself out of commitment to the asylum and back home to his wife.

This book is a strange addition to the 1,001 list since it really isn't a novel, but it was certainly worth reading. This was a solid 3.5 star book for me.

[Cross the Styx · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es BUE-NI-SI-MO.

Son las memorias del presidente de la Corte de Apelaciones de Dresde, el cual decía que era víctima de un “almicidio” por parte de Dios. Con absoluta e inusitada coherencia, relata todos sus delirios cuando estuvo internado en una institución mental por “esquizofrenia paranoide”. Sus relatos han servido de análisis fundamentales para la psiquiatría y el psicoanálisis (este libro incluye la interpretación de Freud). Este libro es increíblemente interesante ya que nos permite entrar en la mente de un enfermo mental en primera persona :-O

Como dato “freak”, su nombre es utilizado por Kiefer Sutherland en la película de culto del director Alex Proyas, “Dark City” (ultra recomendable, de verdad véala), en la que el actor interpreta precisamente a un doctor encargado de solucionar los problemas de “identidad” del protagonista.

[Isaac · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by the world's most sensible psychotic, Dr Schreber describes his own powerful place within an infinitely complex cosmic hierarchy of malevolent deities. In this account, God oversees a world of corpses showered with remnants of souls ("rays"). As Schreber's nervous illness exacerbates, his body's magnetic force increases, thus rendering him vulnerable to painful experiments, mind control, and possession by various rays - including but not limited to his doctors, a troupe of 400 young men, and a judge from a neighboring district that he "never knew professionally". He also witnesses the sun pause, a fake city, the removal of his penis, and suffers too many other indignities and miracles to list.

[Sean A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for the sheer authenticity of this document on schizophrenia, written as a firsthand account. The author is a brave man with a unique perspective, this is proof that schizophrenia circumvents reality. More interesting as a case study, but also a somewhat actualized religious mythology.

Two things of note:
-there’s no one that can tell the author his hallucinatory world is not accurate.

-The confinement the author received was cruel, even as you can see the advancements of treatments of the disorder.
Ultimately he sits there and creates his own world. Something we could all learn to do.