Daniel Paul Schreber

Daniel Paul Schreber was born on July 25, 1842 to Daniel Moritz Schreber a German Physician and teacher at the University of Leipzig. Daniel Paul Schreber became a presiding judge for the Saxon high court of appeals in 1893 at the age of 42. Daniel Paul Schreber, the subject of Freud's famous retrospective case history, died in April 1911 in the state mental asylum at Leipzig-Dösen.

In 1893 Paul was at the zenith of his legal career, having just been promoted to presiding judge at the Dresden Higher Regional Court, when he suffered a severe mental breakdown. Thereafter he spent about thirteen years of his life in mental institutions, and while at the Sonnenstein Asylum he composed his one and only book, "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness", a masterpiece that has since inspired scholars in diverse fields. Freud used the book to illustrate his theory of the causal link between homosexuality and paranoia. This heuristically important essay was an exercise in applied, not clinical, psychoanalysis; it was a hermeneutic, not historical, account of a paradigmatic case of paranoia; it was not about Schreber's life.

Paul's father, the son of Moritz Schreber and Pauline Schreber, was a physician who specialized in exercise therapy for skeletal and muscular disorders, both with and without appliances. He attained fame with his 1855 book, "Illustrated Medical In-Door Gymnastics", which may be considered a forerunner of modern rehabilitation medicine. After completing his studies at the well-known Thomasschule (Thomas school), in 1860 Paul began studying law at the University of Leipzig, obtaining his doctorate in jurisprudence in 1869. Two years earlier he entered the ministry of justice and served as judge in a variety of cities in Saxony. In 1878 he wed Ottilie Sabine Behr (1857-1912), the daughter of operatic director Heinrich Behr. His family considered the bride unsuitable. A diabetic, Sabine suffered six miscarriages or stillbirths.

Schreber was hospitalized three times with depressive illnesses, all following real and symbolically important losses: in 1884, after he was defeated in elections to the Reichstag; in 1892-1893, after he was made presiding judge and his wife gave birth to a stillborn boy; and in 1907, when his mother died and his wife suffered a stroke. He functioned normally after the first (moderate, nonpsychotic) depression, and between the second and third (severe, psychotic) episodes, during which time he raised an adopted daughter.

The second depression (the first psychotic episode) began as a prodrome in the summer of 1893. He experienced anxiety dreams about his illness returning and had a fantasy of what a woman might feel during intercourse. By the fall he had a dramatic explosion of symptoms, including insomnia, agitation, hypochondriacal and nihilistic delusions, and attempts at suicide. He voluntarily returned to the Psychiatric Hospital of Leipzig University, under Paul Flechsig, director of the hospital. Months after admission, his agitated depression evolved into a syndrome that involved prosecutory hallucinations and delusions of sexual abuse and hostile human and divine influences, which Schreber described as soul murder. The human influences he attributed mainly to Flechsig. He also developed elaborate ideas of a fantastic cosmology and religion.

By June 1894, with his wife's consent and collaboration, Schreber was transferred by Flechsig to Sonnenstein. There major depression abated by 1897 but his wishes to be allowed to go home went unheeded. Superintendent Guido Weber (using Emil Kraepelin's taxonomy) diagnosed him with incurable paranoia, and he was declared mentally incompetent, yet his wife remained hesitant. Schreber continued to express rage, and he elaborated fantasies that he was to be transformed into a woman to redeem the world. But he was lucid and able to get along socially. He was also able to write his book and to conduct his own defense in court, setting a legal precedent and regaining his freedom in 1902.

However paranoia and schizophrenia

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