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The purpose of this symposium is to reconsider the Schreber case in the light of the advances in psycho-analytic theory that have been made in the half-century since Freud's classical paper. Most notable among these advances have been the concepts of ego-psychology, particularly the concepts of Hartmann, Kris, Loewenstein, Erikson, and Rapaport. This growth in psycho-analytic ego-psychology has been succinctly summarized by Rapaport (1959), and the development of psycho-analytic theory generally was treated more extensively by him in 1960.
My reconsideration of the case will be made in terms of Erikson's concepts of psycho-social stages of personality development. Space does not allow an extensive effort to relate this view of the case to the other new concepts of ego-psychology or to the basic concepts of libido theory, particularly the concept of psychosexual stages of development; I reconsider the case, therefore, in terms of only one of the several sets of new concepts that have been placed at our disposal in recent years, and I largely omit consideration of libido theory. Let me emphasize a point that has not been sufficiently noted by many authors who have restudied the Schreber case, a point especially ignored by Macalpine and Hunter (1955); a study of any case from any one point of view, libido-concepts, ego-concepts, or psychosocial concepts, must be incomplete. Freud's (1911) formulations were made in terms of libido theory and of the Oedipus complex. These were the concepts, and the only ones, then available. They are obviously incomplete in the light of our present knowledge. But a study of the case from any one of our more modern points of view only would be equally incomplete.
Secondarily, I wish to underline Schreber's conflict with his mother, an important but rarely emphasized factor in his illness that is prominently, although only symbolically, represented throughout the Memoirs. With the rare exception of such authors as Fairbairn (1956) a