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An important cause of Schreber's second illness was his appointment as Senatspräsident, the highest court office in Saxony. The ensuing illness reveals Schreber as one of those 'wrecked by success'. Yet Schreber differs from the type described by Freud. In Freud's examples the patients were wrecked by their feelings of guilt after an Oedipal wish had been satisfied. In contradistinction to this process, it was a long-standing desire not of the id but of the ego that was fulfilled in Schreber's case. His ego warded off a strong unconscious urge toward femininity by engaging in competition with his rivals. At the moment when his appointment brought him success, the need to compete disappeared. In this way the ego lost one of its strongest defenses against the urge toward femininity.
The well-known dreams during the period between Schreber's appointment and the assuming of his new duties inform us of the marked change in ego strength. Schreber's feeling of relief upon awakening after dreaming that his former illness had returned is interpreted by the author as follows: Schreber was glad that he still was able to ward off his feminine urge (as openly revealed by his dream of how wonderful it would be to be a woman submitting to intercourse) without having to resort to defense mechanisms which would bring about the return of his former symptoms. Yet his illness was merely postponed. Once he entered office, his ego was quickly exhausted in his efforts to perform his new duties, and the symptoms broke out. These symptoms—such as his inability to sleep, his various anxieties, his suspicions of Flechsig, his state of enervation, his suicidal thoughts—were the result of ego defenses formed in anticipation of the danger that lay in the development of homosexual orgastic feelings. Nevertheless these defenses were in vain, and one night his homosexual excitement culminated in a number of emissions. At that moment delusional symptoms made their appearance, which mean