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In a personal communication to Dr Niederland I made an observation on a documentary finding reported in his paper, and he has suggested that I present it to this Symposium. He reported that Schreber's brother, Daniel Gustav, committed suicide by gunshot on 8 May, 1877.
In the Memoirs(Macalpine and Hunter, 1955, p. 91) the patient stated that round about Easter 1894 '… I had visions according to which Professor Flechsig had shot himself either in Weissenburg in Alsace or in the police prison in Leipzig; I also saw—in a dream vision—his funeral procession moving from his house towards the Thonberg (that is to say not really in the direction which one would expect according to the spatial relation between the University Nerve Clinic and St. John's Cemetery).'—'I am, however, almost certain now that these visions did not conform to real happenings in the way I believed I had seen them.'
These passages suggest that the patient was actually recalling his brother's suicide and identifying Flechsig with his brother. This conclusion confirms Freud's thesis that Flechsig represented the patient's brother. Dr Niederland in a personal communication to me added that since Flechsig = Brother = Father = God, my observation supports Freud's main thesis on the Schreber case.