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One hundred years ago, 1893, Senatspräsident Daniel Paul Schreber began to suffer from insomnia. For the second time in his life he became the patient of Dr. Paul Emil Flechsig. This was the beginning of a nine year long hospitalization. During these years Schreber wrote his famous Memoirs of My Nervous Illness/Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken nebst Nachträge und einem Anhang über die Frage: “Unter welchen Vorausset-zungen darf eine für geisteskrank erachtete Person gegen ihren erkläwrten Willen in eine Heilanstalt festgehalten werden?”/. Through his illness and his way of fighting for his civil rights Senatspräsident Schreber has become one of the paradigmatic persons in the history of psychiatry, especially forensic psychiatry, and of psychoanalysis.
Now, one hundred years later, Dr Zvi Lothane has given us In Defence of Schreber. Soul Murder and Psychiatry. I started my reading of his book by finding it interesting. The longer I followed Lothane into the world of Schreber, the more I found that this book had a profound impact on me. Of most significant importance for the reader is the spirit of humanization which is the hallmark of this book. The rigour, clarity and care with which Dr Lothane describes not only Schreber himself, but also his family and his doctors, as well as the historical and cultural conditions of the drama, has a beneficial effect on the reader, strengthening his courage to stand up for human values.
Psychoanalysts have met Daniel Paul Schreber in Freud's Psycho-Analytic Notes on a Case of Paranoia. In this paper Freud makes the connection between paranoia and repressed, passive homosexuality, which has deeply influenced many generations of psychoanalysts in their view of paranoid phenomena and homosexuality. Lothane gives Freud due credit for being one of those who considered Schreber a quotable author, not viewing him as a madman. Lothane goes many steps further. In a special chapter he gives a broad presentation of Schreber as an Interpr