Open letter to Flechsig
In his book, Memoirs of my nervous illness, delivered to his Psychiatrist Professor Flechsig, Daniel Paul Schreber enclosed a perplexing letter… “I do not harbor any personal grievance against any person. My aim is solely to further knowledge of truth in a vital field, that of religion…Your name plays an essential role…in that certain nerves taken from your nervous system became ‘tested souls’…and…exerted a damaging influence on me and still does to this day…I think it is possible that you…carried on some hypnotic, suggestive…contact with my nerves, even while we were separated in space…This ‘tested soul’ allowed itself to be driven by the impulse of ruthless self-determination and lust for power…I need hardly mention of what immeasurable importance it would be if you could in any way confirm the surmises I have sketched above…The rest of my thesis would thereby gain universal credence and would immediately be regarded as a serious scientific problem to be investigated in every possible way.” ~ March 1903
Daniel Paul Schreber
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. “I have twice had a nervous illness, each time in consequence of mental over-strain; first was occasioned by my candidature for parliament, the second by the extraordinary burden of work on taking up office as President of the Senate of a Court of Appeal in Dresden, to which I had been newly appointed.” After the first collapse “I was eventually cured, and therefore I had at the time no reason to be other than most grateful to Professor Flechsig…After recovering from my first illness I spent eight years with my wife, on the whole quite happy ones, rich also in outward honors and marred only from time to time by the repeated disappointment of our hope of being blessed with children.”
During one night in bed, Paul had a negative premonition that something was wrong. “I had dreamed several times that my former nervous illness had returned; naturally I was as unhappy about this in the dream, as I felt happy on waking that it had only been a dream. Furthermore, one morning while still in bed, I had a feeling which struck me as highly peculiar. It was the idea that it really must be rather pleasant to be a woman succumbing to intercourse. This idea was so foreign to my whole nature that I may say I would have rejected it with indignation if fully awake; from what I have experienced since I cannot exclude the possibility that some external influences were at work to implant this idea in me.”
As Paul began losing sleep, even while taking sleep medication, he was beginning to hallucinate. “During several nights when I could not get to sleep, a recurrent crackling noise in the wall of our bedroom became noticeable at shorter or longer intervals, time and again it woke me as I was about to go to sleep. Naturally we thought of a mouse although it was very extraordinary that a mouse should have found its way to the first floor of such a solidly built house. But having heard similar noises innumerable times since then, and still hearing them around me every day in day-time and at night, I have come to recognize them as undoubted divine miracles – they are called ‘interferences’ by the voices talking to me – and I must at least suspect, without being too definite about it, that even then it was already a matter of such a miracle; in other words that right from the beginning the more or less definite intention existed to prevent my sleep and later my recovery from the illness resulting from insomnia.”
Returning to Dr. Flechsig for more treatment, “he spoke of the advances made in psychiatry since my first illness, of newly discovered sleeping drugs, etc., and gave me hope of delivering me of the whole illness through one prolific sleep,” but unfortunately the treatment didn’t work. “Professor Flechsig..,advised my admission into his Asylum, for which I set out immediately by cab accompanied by him…After 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…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 at 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.”
With the help of chloral hydrate, Paul was able to gain some sleep. His wife continued to visit him until his state worsened. “A further decline in my nervous state and an important chapter in my life commenced about the 15th of February 1894 when my wife, who until then had spent a few hours every day with me and had also taken lunch with me in the Asylum, undertook a four-day journey to her father in Berlin in order to have a holiday herself, of which she was in urgent need. My condition deteriorated so much in these four days that after her return I saw her only once more, and then declared that I could not wish my wife to see me again in the low state into which I had fallen. From then on my wife’s visits ceased; when after a long time I did see her again at the window of a room opposite mine, such important changes had meanwhile occurred in my environment and in myself that I no longer considered her a living being, but only thought I saw in her a human form produced by miracle in the manner of the ‘fleeting-improvised-men.’ Decisive for my mental collapse was one particular night; during that night I had a quite unusual number of pollutions [orgasms] (perhaps half a dozen)…From then on appeared the first signs of communication with supernatural powers, particularly that of nerve-contact which Professor Fleschig kept up with me in such a way that he spoke to my nerves without being present. From then on I also gained the impression that Professor Flechsig had secret designs against me; this seemed confirmed when I once asked him during a personal visit whether he really honestly believed that I could be cured, and he held out certain hopes, but could no longer- at least so it seemed to me – look me straight in the eye.”
The World Order
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 “is contained in the nerves of the body, and the total mental life of a human being rests on their excitability by external impressions…Vibrations are thereby caused in the nerves which produce the sensations of pleasure and pain…and they are able to retain the memory of impressions received.”
“Impressions received remain attached to the nerves. The soul, as it were, only goes into hibernation as some lower animals do and can be re-awakened to a new life…” God in Paul’s religion “is only nerve, not body, and akin therefore to the human soul. But unlike the human body, where nerves are present only in limited numbers, the nerves of God are infinite and eternal. They possess the same qualities as human nerves but in a degree surpassing all human understanding. They have a faculty of transforming themselves into all things of the created world; in this capacity they are called rays; and herein lies the essence of divine creation…God is able to perceive everything that happens on earth and possibly on other inhabited planets…All He sees He enjoys as the fruits of His creative power, much as a human being is pleased with what he has created with his hands or with his mind…God left the world to their own devices and only provided continuous warmth of the sun…God did not interfere directly in the fate of peoples or individuals…It could however occur now and then as an exception…a fervent prayer might in a special case induce God to give help by intervening with a miracle…I have on innumerable occasions experienced in my own body and continue to do so daily even now that God has, for instance, the power to remove from the human body any germ of illness by sending forth a few pure rays.”
Paul then describes the afterlife. His God approaches corpses “in order to draw their nerves, in which self-awareness was not extinct but quiescent, out of their bodies up to Himself by the power of the rays, thereby awakening them to new heavenly life; The new life beyond is the state of Blessedness to which the human soul could be raised. But this did not occur without prior purification and sifting of the human nerves which required, according to the variable condition of the respective human souls, a shorter or longer time of preparation, and perhaps even certain intermediate stages. Only pure human nerves were of use to God – or if one prefers, in heaven – because it was their destiny to be attached to God Himself and ultimately to become in a sense part of Him as ‘forecourts of heaven.’ The nerves of morally depraved men are blackened; morally pure men have white nerves; the higher the man’s moral standard in life, the more his nerves become completely white or pure, an intrinsic property of God’s nerves…The process of purification was connected with a feeling of an unpleasant task for the souls, or perhaps of an uncomfortable sojourn in the underworld, which was necessary to purify them gradually.”
“Fleeting-improvised-men”
Like all religions, there’s an element of reward and punishment to gain the favor of the divine. “The souls undergoing the process of purification were variously graded as ‘Satans,’ ‘Devils,’ ‘Assistant Devils,’ ‘Senior Devils,’ and ‘Basic Devils, when set down as ‘fleeting-improvised-men,'” 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. “The transmigration of souls also seems to have served the purpose of purifying human souls and was widespread, as a number of experiences lead me to believe. In this process the human souls concerned were called to a new human life on other planets, presumably by being born in the manner of a human being, perhaps retaining some dim memory of their earlier existence…From the voices that speak to me…I learnt of a number of persons to whom in after life a much lower station was allotted than they had held in the previous one, perhaps as a kind of punishment…Souls completely cleansed by the process of purification ascended to heaven and so gained the state of Blessedness. This consisted of uninterrupted enjoyment combined with the contemplation of God…Souls’ greatest happiness lies in continuing reveling in pleasure combined with recollections of their human past.” And of course, since this was during the turn of the 20th the century, “the male state of Blessedness was superior to the female state; the latter seems to have consisted mainly in an uninterrupted feeling of voluptuousness…The ultimate destiny of all souls is to merge with other souls, and integrate into higher entities, remaining aware only of being part of God.”
The dark side of Paul’s religion was how a Devil could commit Soul Murder to prevent uninterrupted Blessedness. “…It is somehow possible to take possession of another person’s soul in order to prolong one’s life at another soul’s expense, or to secure some other advantages which outlast death…The main role is supposed to be played by the Devil, who entices a human being into selling his soul to him…for some worldly advantages…[Assuming] that torturing a soul as an end in itself gave the Devil special pleasure.”
Paul’s world included communication from God via the nerves, but also influences from those he did not want access to his nerves. “Divine rays above all have the power of influencing the nerves of a human being in this manner; by this means God has always been able to infuse dreams into a sleeping human being. I myself first felt this influence as emanating from Professor Flechsig. The only possible explanation I can think of is that Professor Flechsig in some way knew how to put divine rays to his own use…This influence has in the course of years assumed forms more and more contrary to the Order of the World and to man’s natural right to be master of his own nerves, and I might say become increasingly grotesque.”
Compulsive thinking
Paul then describes the experience of his illness and how trapped he felt by his intrusive thoughts. “The nature of compulsive thinking lies in a human being having to think incessantly; in other words, man’s natural right to give the nerves of his mind their necessary rest from time to time by thinking nothing was from the beginning denied me by the rays in contact with me; they continually wanted to know what I was thinking about. For instance I was asked in these very words: ‘What are you thinking of now?’; because my nerves did not react to this absurd question, one was soon driven to take refuge in a system of falsifying my thoughts. For instance the above question was answered spontaneously: ‘He should think about the order of the world’; that is to say the influence of the rays forced my nerves to perform the movements corresponding to the use of these words. The number of points from which contact with my nerves originated increased with time: apart from Professor Flechsig, who was the only one whom for a time at least I knew definitely to be among the living, they were mostly departed souls who began more and more to interest themselves in me.”
“All these souls spoke to me as ‘voices’ more or less at the same time without one knowing of the presence of the others. Everyone who realizes that all this is not just the morbid offspring of my fantasy, will be able to appreciate the unholy turmoil they caused in my head.”
Despite all this struggle, Paul was able to find periods of mental silence in life. “Playing the piano and reading books and newspapers is – as far as the state of my head allows – my main defense, which makes even the most drawn-out voices finally perish; at night when this is not easily done or in day-time when the mind requires a change of occupation, I usually found committing poems by heart…which I then recite in silence on the quiet verbatim…However insignificant the rhymes, even obscene verses are worth their weight in gold as mental nourishment compared with the terrible nonsense my nerves are otherwise forced to listen to.”
Unmanning
Paul Schreber’s narrative of the Order of the World moves into Biblical destruction and renewal. “The second point to be discussed in this chapter is the tendency, innate in the Order of the world, to unman a human being who has entered into permanent contact with rays. This is connected on the one hand with the nature of God’s nerves, through which Blessedness is felt, if not exclusively as, at least accompanied by, a greatly increased feeling of voluptuousness; on the other hand it is connected with the basic plan on which the Order of the World seems to rest, that in the case of world catastrophes which necessitate the destruction of mankind on any star, whether intentionally or otherwise, the human race can be renewed. When on some star moral decay (“voluptuous excesses”) or perhaps nervousness has seized the whole of mankind to such an extent that the forecourts of heaven could not be expected to be adequately replenished by their excessively blackened nerves, or there was reason to fear a dangerous increase of attraction on God’s nerves, then the destruction of the human race on that star could occur either spontaneously (through annihilating epidemics, etc.) or, being decided on by God, be put into effect by means of earthquakes, deluges, etc.”
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. “The Eternal Jew (in the sense described) had to be unmanned (transformed into a woman) to be able to bear children. This process of unmanning consisted in the (external) male genitals (scrotum and penis) being retracted into the body and the internal sexual organs being at the same time transformed into the corresponding female sexual organs, a process which might have been completed in a sleep lasting hundreds of years, because the skeleton (pelvis, etc.) had also to be changed. The rays of the lower God (Ariman) have the power of producing the miracle of unmanning; the rays of the upper God (Ormuzd) have the power of restoring manliness when necessary.” Paul then indirectly asserts that the same phenomenon is happening to him. “I have myself twice experienced (for a short time) the miracle of unmanning on my own body; that the miracle did not reach full development and that it was even reversed again, was due only to the fact that, apart from the pure rays of God, other rays were present led by ‘tested’ (impure) souls, Flechsig’s rays and others, which prevented the completion of the process of transformation in its purity and in accordance with the Order of the World. The Eternal Jew was maintained and provided with the necessary means of life by the ‘fleeting-improvised-men’; that is to say souls were for this purpose transitorily put into human shape by miracles, probably not only for the lifetime of the Eternal Jew himself but for many generations, until his offspring were sufficiently numerous to be able to maintain themselves. This seems to be the main purpose of the institution of ‘fleeting-improvised-men’ in the Order of the World.”
Blaming Flechsig
Paul’s narrative eventually falls on a scapegoat for the experience of his unmanning. “It is in my opinion that Professor Flechsig must have had some idea of this tendency, innate in the Order of the World, whereby in certain conditions the unmanning of a human being is provided for; perhaps he thought of this himself or these ideas were inspired in him by divine rays, which I think is more likely…The dependence on Professor Flechsig, or on his soul, in which God found Himself through His inability to dissolve again the nerve-contact which Professor Flechsig had managed to establish and then to abuse by holding fast to it. Thus began the policy of vacillation in which attempts to cure my nervous illness alternated with efforts to annihilate me as a human being who, because of his every-increasing nervousness, had become a danger to God Himself…Professor Flechsig had found a way of raising himself up to heaven, either with the whole or part of his soul, and so making himself a leader of rays, without prior death and without undergoing the process of purification. In this way a plot was laid against me, the purpose of which was to hand me over to another human being after my nervous illness had been recognized as, or assumed to be, incurable, in such a way that my soul was handed to him, but my body – transformed into a female body and, misconstruing the above-described fundamental tendency of the Order of the World – was then left to that human being for sexual misuse and simply ‘forsaken,’in other words left to rot…The way I was treated externally seemed to agree with the intention announced in the nerve-language; for weeks I was kept in bed and my clothes were removed to make me – as I believed – more amenable to voluptuous sensations, which could be stimulated in me by the female nerves which had already started to enter my body; medicines, which I am convinced served the same purpose, were also used, these I therefore refused, or spat out again when an attendant poured them forcibly into my mouth…God Himself must have known of the plan, if indeed He was not the instigator, to commit soul murder on me, and to hand over my body in the manner of a female harlot.”
Yet despite all these challenges Paul found emotional support in his important place in the World Order. “All attempts at committing soul murder, at unmanning me for purposes contrary to the Order of the World (that is to say for the sexual satisfaction of a human being) and later at destruction of my reason, have failed. From this apparently so unequal battle between one weak human being and God Himself, I emerge, albeit not without bitter sufferings and deprivations, victorious, because the Order of the World is on my side.”
Redemption through repopulation
What was not contrary to the World Order according to Paul was eventually reassessed as having a important goal for the future of humanity. “For my part I was always led by the desire to draw these souls and soul parts to myself and so ultimately to cause their dissolution; I started from the perfectly sound supposition that when all ‘tested’ or impure souls had been eliminated from their position of so-called middle instances between myself and God’s omnipotence, a solution of the conflict in consonance with the Order of the World would follow automatically; either a cure by a complete calming of my nerves through sleep, or – a possibility I later considered – unmanning, in consonance with the Order of the World, with the purpose of creating new human beings…several times (particularly in bed) there were marked indications of an actual retraction of the male organ.”
Paul then describes his struggle with his feminine impulses. “For over a year therefore the female nerves, or nerves of voluptuousness, which had penetrated my body in great masses, could not gain any influence on my behaviour or on my way of thinking. I suppressed every feminine impulse by exerting my sense of manly honor and also by the holiness of my religious ideas, which occupied me almost exclusively; indeed I really became aware of the presence of female nerves only when they were artificially set in vibration by rays on certain occasions so as to produce a sensation of timidity and to ‘represent’ me as a human being trembling with feminine anxiety. On the other hand my will power could not prevent the occurrence, particularly when lying in bed, of a sensation of voluptuousness which as so called ‘soul-voluptuousness’ exerted an increased power of attraction on the rays…During that time the signs of a transformation into a woman became so marked on my body, that I could no longer ignore the imminent goal at which the whole development was aiming. In the immediately preceding nights my male sexual organ might actually have been retracted had I not resolutely set my will against it, still following the stirring of my sense of manly honor; so near completion was the miracle. Soul-voluptuousness had become so strong that I myself received the impression of a female body, first on my arms and hands, later on my legs, bosom, buttocks and other parts of my body.”
Blessedness and voluptuousness
In the end of the 1800’s naturally these tendencies would have to be hidden. “Few people have been brought up according to such strict moral principles as I, and have throughout life practiced such moderation especially in matters of sex, as I venture to claim for myself…I [would not] ever betray any sexual lust in contact with other people. But as soon as I am alone with God, if I may so express myself, I must continually or at least at certain times, strive to give divine rays the impression of a woman in the height of sexual delight; to achieve this I have to employ all possible means, and have to strain all my intellectual powers and foremost my imagination.”
To justify these feelings Paul had to explain the limits of his voluptuous enjoyment. “I have frequently referred in this book to the close relationship which exists between voluptuousness and everlasting Blessedness. Voluptuousness can be considered as part of everlasting Blessedness and is in a sense inherent in man and other living beings. Voluptuous enjoyment of Blessedness is granted to souls in perpetuity as an end in itself, but to a human being and other living creatures solely as a means for the preservation of the species. Herein lie the moral limitations of voluptuousness for human beings. An excess of voluptuousness would render man unfit to fulfill his other obligations; it would prevent him from ever rising to higher mental and moral perfection; indeed experience teaches that not only single individuals but also whole nations have perished through voluptuous excesses. For me such moral limits to voluptuousness no longer exist, indeed in a certain sense the reverse applies. In order not to be misunderstood, I must point out that when I speak of my duty to cultivate voluptuousness, I never mean any sexual desires towards other human beings (females) least of all sexual intercourse, but that I have to imagine myself as man and woman in one person having intercourse with myself, or somehow have to achieve with myself a certain sexual excitement, etc. – which perhaps under other circumstances might be considered immoral – but which has nothing whatever to do with any idea of masturbation or anything like it.
The justification goes further into divine realms, as a permission to enjoy his sensations. “This behavior has been forced on me through God having placed Himself into a relationship with me which is contrary to the Order of the World. God wishes it. God is inseparably tied to my person through my nerves’ power of attraction which for some time past has become inescapable; there is no possibility of God freeing Himself from nerves for the rest of my life – although His policy is aimed at this – except perhaps in case my unmanning were to become a fact. On the other hand God demands constant enjoyment, as the normal mode of existence for souls within the Order of the World. It is my duty to provide Him with it in the form of highly developed soul-voluptuousness, as far as this is possible in the circumstances contrary to the Order of the World. If I can get a little sensuous pleasure in this process, I feel I am entitled to it as a small compensation for the excess of suffering and privation that has been mine for many years past; it also affords some small recompense for the manifold painful trials and tribulations which I have to suffer even now, particularly when soul-voluptuousness diminishes. I know that I do not offend against any moral duty, but am merely doing what sense dictates in these irregular circumstances; for the effect on the relationship to my wife, (I must use particular discretion in contact with my wife, for whom I retain my former love in full. I may at times have failed by being too frank in conversation or in written communications. It is of course impossible for my wife to understand my trends of thought fully; it must be difficult for her to retain her previous love and admiration for me when she hears that I am preoccupied with ideas of possibly being transformed into a woman. I can deplore this, but am unable to change it; even here I must guard against false sentimentality.)”
Yet this desire to be in voluptuousness has natural limits and ebbs and flows in Paul’s life. He makes an acceptance that these feelings are fleeting. “It is naturally impossible for me to spend the whole day or even the greater part of it with voluptuous ideas or to direct my imagination to them. It would be beyond human nature to do this; human beings are not born only for voluptuous pleasure, and therefore mere voluptuousness as the sole purpose of life would be as unnatural for me as anyone else. On the other hand, continual thinking, uninterrupted activity of the nerves of intellect without any respite, such as the rays impose on me through compulsive thinking, is equally incompatible with human nature. The art of conducting my life in the mad position I find myself – the absurd relation between God and myself which is contrary to the Order of the World – consists in finding a fitting middle course in which both parties, God and man, fare best; in other words, if divine rays find soul-voluptuousness in my body which they can share – which alone makes entering my body acceptable to them – while I retain the necessary rest for my nerves of intellect, particularly at night, and the capacity to occupy myself in a manner commensurate with my intellectual needs.”
“Soul-voluptuousness is not always present in full measure but periodically recedes, partly because God takes withdrawal action, partly because I cannot constantly cultivate voluptuousness. Yet every mental activity… is always accompanied by a considerable decrease in bodily well-being. To find necessary rest from intellectual activity particularly sleep at night, also in day-time for instance after the main meal and in the early morning on awakening, I feel I am entitled to make my physical condition bearable even to the extent of obtaining a feeling of sensuous well-being by cultivating voluptuousness in the above sense.”
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. “I also wish to mention that the lower God (Ariman) in fact confirmed this, when sometime ago he recommended a certain mode of behavior in a number of phrases incorporated in the writing-down-system and spoken by the rays. Particularly such sentences as ‘voluptuousness has become God-fearing’ and ‘excite yourself sexually’ where often heard from the voices emanating from the lower God. Clearly the usual ideas of morality have been reversed in my relation to God. Voluptuousness is permissable for human beings if sanctified in the bond of marriage it serves the purpose of reproduction; but in itself it never counted for much. In my relation to God, however, voluptuousness has become ‘God-fearing,’ that is to say it is the likeliest satisfactory solution for the clash of interests arising out of circumstances contrary to the Order of the World…”
Freud’s book review
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. “The psychoanalytic investigation of paranoia would not be possible at all if the patients were not peculiar in betraying, albeit in distorted form, precisely that which other neurotics hide away in secret.” Freud though cautioned readers of his analysis. “It is only natural that one analyst will err in his work on the side of caution, another on the side of audacity.”
Very quickly Freud saw transferences with Schreber and Flechsig. “What was for the patient a delusion of sexual persecution was retroactively transformed into religious megalomania. The persecutor was initially taken to be the patient’s doctor, Prof. Flechsig, with God himself taking his place in due course.”
“These comments are of a decisive importance for our understanding of the delusion of emasculation and so of the case as a whole. We might add that the ‘voices’ that the patient heard always treated the transformation into a woman as a cause for sexual shame, giving them grounds for scorning him:
‘In view of my apparently imminent emasculation as Miss Schreber, rays of God often felt able to make mockery of me.’
‘And this individual who lets himself be fucked calls himself a one-time Presiding Judge?’ ‘Aren’t you ashamed to face your lady wife?’
“We already know that the Schreber Case initially fitted the mould of the delusion of persecution, and that this became obscured only after the turning-point of the illness (the ‘reconciliation’). The persecutions then become increasingly bearable; the purpose of the threatened emasculation in terms of the World Order cause the sense of disgrace to recede. The origin of all the persecutions, though, is Flechsig, and he remains their instigator throughout the course of the illness.”
“Having studied a series of cases of delusion of persecution, I, and also others, have developed the impression that the relationship of the patient to his persecutor can be solved according to a simple formula. The emotional importance is projected in the shape of an external power, the tone of the emotion turned into its opposite; the individual now hated and feared as a result of his persecution was once loved and admired. The persecution established by the delusion serves above all to justify the patient’s emotional transformation. A surge of homosexual libido was, then, the cause of this illness, its object probably from the start Dr Flechsig, and the struggle against this libidinal arousal produced the conflict from which the manifestations of the illness sprang.”
To validate the experiences that people have of sexual fluidity that people experience throughout life Freud says, “In general human beings vacillate between heterosexual and homosexual feelings throughout their lives, and failure or disappointment on the one side tends to push them towards the other. We know of no such instances as far as Schreber is concerned; but we do not hesitate to draw attention to a somatic factor that may indeed be of relevance. At the time of this illness Dr Schreber was 51 years old and found himself at a time of life which was sexually of critical importance, a time in which the previous intensification of the sexual function in women is subject to a radical regression, the significance of which appears also to extend to men. Men, too, have a ‘climacteric’, with the consequent susceptibilities to illness.”
Going beyond a biological theory of a male menopause, Schreber’s influences go back farther. “The feeling of affection for the doctor may well spring from a ‘process of transference’, according to which a patient’s emotional investment is removed from a person of importance for him on to the intrinsically indifferent person of the doctor, so that the doctor is selected as a substitute, a surrogate, for somebody much closer to the patient…This other person can be none other than the father…The boy’s infantile attitude towards his father is perfectly familiar to us; it contains the same combination of reverential subordination and rebellious resistance that we found in Schreber’s relationship to his God and so acts as the unmistakable, faithfully replicated model for the latter. The fact that Schreber’s father was a physician, indeed a highly regarded physician doubtless admired by his patients, explains for us the most striking character traits of his God that Schreber critically pinpoints. It is doubtless part of the nature of God that He performs miracles, but a physician too performs miracles, as reported by his enthusiastic clients: he carries out miracle cures…In the case of Schreber, then, we once more find ourselves on the distinctly familiar ground of the father complex.”
Another angle of disappointment, beyond career, was Schreber’s family life. “We know that our task is to make a connection between the appearance of a wishful fantasy and a frustration, a deprivation in real life. Schreber indeed admits to such a deprivation. His marriage, pictured as happy in other respects, was not blessed for him with children, above all with the son who might have given him solace for the loss of his father and brother, and so acted as a channel for the unsatisfied homosexual affection…Dr Schreber appears to have formed the fantasy that if he were a woman he would be more successful in having children and so to have found a way back to the feminine attitude towards his father of his early childhood years. The delusion, which would come to be populated through his emasculation…was thus also designed to alleviate his childlessness.”
Freud had the help of Carl Jung who had more experience with paranoid schizophrenics. They did a study of many patients and they “…noted with surprise how clearly the defence against a homosexual wish was to be recognized at the core of the pathological conflict in each of these cases and how all of them had come to grief in trying to overcome their unconsciously intensified homosexuality.”
Freud then describes how the Paranoia develops unconsciously in the subject who is embarrassed by their feelings. It starts with the thought “I (a man) love him (a man)…Delusion of persecution, which proclaims loud and clear: ‘I do not love him – indeed, I hate him.’ The contradiction, which could not be put in any other way in the unconscious, cannot however become conscious in this form for the paranoiac. The mechanism of symptom formation in paranoia demands that feeling as inner perception ‘Indeed, I hate him’ is transformed by projection into another: ‘He hates (persecutes) me, which will entitle me to hate him.’ The driving unconscious feeling thus appears to be the consequence of an external perception: ‘Indeed, I do not love him – I hate him, indeed – because he persecutes me.’ Observation removes any doubt that the persecutor is any other than the erstwhile beloved….Projection: An internal perception is suppressed and, by way of substitute, its content, having undergone a degree of distortion, is consciously registered as an external perception…If, instead of looking for the causes of certain sensations within ourselves, as we otherwise do, we locate them externally, then this normal procedure deserves to be called projection.”
As developed later in his libido theory on narcissism, libido cravings can go external or internal. “There developed in Schreber the conviction of a great catastrophe, of the end of the world…The patient has withdrawn the libidinal investment hitherto lodged with them from the people around him and from the world outside as a whole; everything has thus become indifferent and unrelated to him and has to be explained through a secondary rationalization as ‘miracled up, fleetingly improvised.’ The end of the world is the projection of this internal catastrophe; his subjective world has come to an end since he withdrew his love from it…What we take to be the production of the illness, the formation of the delusion, is in reality the attempt at a cure, the reconstruction.”
Yet a key question on libido is how much withdrawal of interest in the world has actually happened? “It cannot be claimed that the paranoiac has fully withdrawn his interest from the external world, even at the height of repression, as one is compelled to say of other forms of hallucinatory psychosis. He perceives the outside world, he takes account of changes in it, is prompted by its impressions to establish explanations (the ‘fleetingly improvised’ men), and so I consider it much more likely that his altered relation to the world is to be explained entirely or principally by the loss of his libidinal interest…Schreber’s ‘rays of God’, composed of a condensation of solar rays, nerve fibres, and spermatoza, are in fact nothing other than the libidinal investments, concretely represented and projected outwards, and so lend his delusion a striking conformity with our theory…The neuroses are essentially produced out of the conflict between the ego and the sexual drive.”
Jung’s disagreement with Freudian Orthodoxy
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. “On this occasion Freud remembered his original sexual definition of libido and tried to come to terms with the change of meaning that had quietly taken place in the meantime. In his paper on Schreber he asks himself whether what the psychoanalytic school calls libido and conceives as ‘interest from erotic sources’ coincides with interest in general. Freud thus broaches the question of whether the loss of reality in schizophrenia is due entirely to the withdrawal of erotic interest, or whether this coincides with objective interest in general…The fact is that in very many cases reality disappears altogether, so that not a trace of psychological adaptation can be found in these patients. We are therefore compelled to admit that not only the erotic interest, but all interest whatsoever, has got lost, and with it the whole adaptation to reality. Abnormal displacements of libido, quite definitely sexual, do in fact play a great role in these illnesses. But although very characteristic repressions of sexual libido do take place in the neuroses, the loss of reality so typical of [schizophrenia] never occurs. In [schizophrenia] the loss of the reality function is so extreme that it must involve the loss of other instinctual forces whose sexual character must be denied absolutely, for no one is likely to maintain that reality is a function of sex. Moreover, if it were, the withdrawal of erotic interest in the neuroses would necessarily entail a loss of reality comparable to that which occurs in [schizophrenia]. But, as I said before, this is not the case.
(Another thing to be considered is that the introversion of sexual libido leads to an investment of the ego which might conceivably produce that effect of loss of reality. It is indeed tempting to explain the psychology of the loss in this way. But when we examine more closely the various things that can arise from the withdrawal and introversion of sexual libido, we come to see that though it can produce the psychology of a [retiring ascetic], it cannot produce [schizophrenia]. The ascetic’s whole endeavour is to exterminate every trace of sexual interest, and this is something that cannot be asserted of [schizophrenia].)
These facts have made it impossible for me to apply Freud’s libido theory to [schizophrenia]…It seems to me impossible simply to transfer the libido theory to [schizophrenia], because this disease shows a loss of reality which cannot be explained solely by the loss of erotic interest.”
Concepts and reality
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, “…incapable of being the phallus that the mother lacks, he [was] left with the solution of being the woman that men lack.” The introduction of The Schreber Case by Colin Mccabe describes this gap between cultural conditioning and “the inescapabililty of homosexual desire.”
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.
Soul Murder
Another layer of insight from psychoanalyst Morton Schatzman, in Soul Murder, was the role of Paul’s father in his upbringing. He says, “Dr. Moritz Schreber was an unusual man. He wrote books about human anatomy and physiology, hygiene and physical culture. He was devoted to body-building by gymnastics: he exercised daily and had parallel and horizontal bars built in his garden; he founded a gymnastic association, had a gymnasium built for it, and successfully urged student associations to force their members to join it. He added moral principles to his precepts for physical health, joining them in a comprehensive educational system for parents and teachers. He said he used his methods upon his own children. He believed that if readers of his books applied his ideas to their daily lives and their children’s, a stronger race of men would result. He dedicated one book of his, ‘to the salvation of future generations.'”
His method of parenting was highly controlled and stifling. Dr. Schreber, “felt humanity to be beleaguered by adversaries, namely weakness, sensuality, indolence, softness, and cowardice.” It was “…especially important and crucial for the whole of life with regard to character…to form a protective wall against the unhealthy predominance of the emotional side, against that feeble sensitiveness – the disease of our age, which must be recognized as the usual reason for the increasing frequency of depression, mental illness, and suicide…Ironically, depression and mental illness plagued his two sons and led to the suicide of one…Daniel Gustav, three years older than his brother, Daniel Paul, shot and killed himself at thirty-eight. Daniel Gustav’s youngest sister said he had a ‘progressive psychosis’ and that a doctor had thought of placing him in an asylum; a newspaper obituary said he had been melancholic.”
There is little about Paul’s mother, but Anna Schreber is quoted as saying that, “father discussed with our mother everything and anything; she took part in all his ideas, plans, and projects, she read the galley proofs of his writings with him, and was his faithful, close companion in everything.”
He ultimately used punishment on children, as young as possible to “master the child forever, to rule the child with only a glance, a word, a single threatening gesture…Dr. Schreber presupposes that a parent’s goal is to master the child..[in order to be saved from itself.]” 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, “much of Schreber’s so-called madness can be seen to be the result of an accumulation of his adaptations to his father’s constraints.”
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. “Over and over again the son says he harbors no ‘personal grievance’ against anyone, intends no ‘reproach,’ means not to ‘recriminate about the past,’ feels ‘no ill-will against any human being for what happened in times gone by,’ wishes to raise no ‘complaints about the past,’ etc. It is as if he keeps reminding himself and others that he is not feeling what he would like to feel, but cannot feel, about his past.” Rules to obey the father, and punishments to condition to the point that mere looks are enough to inhibit the child, point to a form of mind control. “What is called hallucination or a delusion may be a mind’s attempt to reveal itself to itself, given the presence of a rule it imposes upon itself that forbids it to do just that. Without the rule, it might not need the hallucination or delusion.”
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, “how could someone think of how to help others avoid the ‘temptation’ to think of something without, in some sense, thinking of it himself?” 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.
Modern reasons for Schizophrenia and Paranoia
In a recent review on current theories of the origin of Schizophrenia, there are advances upon the old psychoanalytic theories with added biological explanations. “Our understanding of schizophrenia has progressed through advances in epidemiology and neuroimaging; but for over four decades, the dopamine hypothesis has remained the leading pathoetiologic theory of schizophrenia. Additionally, schizophrenia represents complex and multidimensional phenotypes with high heritability rates, exceeding 80% in twin studies. On the other hand, numerous environmental factors have been found to play an important role in the causality of schizophrenia. Factors that have been found to increase the risk of schizophrenia, include cannabis use, chronic psychosocial stressors, including childhood adversity, migration/ethnic minority status, and urbanicity. Furthermore, acute stress plays a role in triggering psychotic symptoms, and impaired stress tolerance is associated with prodromal symptoms.”
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.
Memoirs of my mental illness – Daniel Paul Schreber: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780940322202/
The Schreber Case – Sigmund Freud: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780142437421/
The Essential Jung – Carl Jung: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780006530657/
Soul Murder – Morton Schatzman: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780140216448/
My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Secret History of Modernity – Eric L. Santner: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780691026275/
Paradoxes of Delusion – Louis A. Sass: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780801498992/
Psychosis and Sexual Identity: Toward a Post-Analytic View of the Schreber Case – David B. Allison (et. al): https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780887066160/
The Sexual Spectrum: Why We’re All Different – Olive Skene Johnson: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781551929804/
Esterberg ML, Goulding SM, Walker EF. Cluster A Personality Disorders: Schizotypal, Schizoid and Paranoid Personality Disorders in Childhood and Adolescence. Journal of Psychopathology & Behavioral Assessment. 2010;32(4):515-528. doi:10.1007/s10862-010-9183-8.
Tarakita, N., Yoshida, K., Sugawara, N., Kubo, K., Furukori, H., Fujii, A., … Yasui-Furukori, N. (2018). Differences in etiological beliefs about schizophrenia among patients, family, and medical staff. Neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 15, 137–142. doi:10.2147/NDT.S185483
Psychology: https://psychreviews.org/category/psychology01/