Chapter VIII. The Schreber Case (Inner World)

It is of course with a reservation in mind that one includes the Schreber case among Freud's clinical papers, since its content does not relate to experiences in the course of analytical treatment. Freud himself, in a somewhat disingenuous way justifies both its use and the intrusion upon the privacy of the subject, Dr Schreber; but one can see that he was quite enthralled by the ‘Memoirs’ with special reference to the problem which exercised him - perhaps excessively - all through his scientific life: namely that of ‘choice of neurosis’. However, it is not from this point of view that I wish to examine the paper, but rather from a more phenomenological one. In a certain sense, Freud was so occupied with using the case as material for exposition that he does not fully explore its rich content. Or at least he does not follow through this exploration. As the prelude to the theory of narcissism it stands close to the Rat Man in approaching a concept of splitting processes, and it is unique among Freud's writings in approaching a concept of ‘the world’ as an aspect of mental life.

Schreber's illness, which first manifest itself as a severe hypochondria, metamorphosed during its second phase into a paranoid deterioration, the chief persecutor of which was his previous physician, and then slowly underwent an elaboration into a grandiose delusional system in which the figure of God played a highly ambiguous role: half persecutor, half lover. It is characteristic of Freud's boldness that he could take an interest in these highly bizarre phenomena on the basis of an assumption that they were, nonetheless, comprehensible derivatives of the common impulses of the human mind. But while it is a bold stand, it may also be accused of a certain pedestrian determination which emerges at times, even to Freud's embarrassment, as when he has to apologise to the reader for the interpretation that the sun, whose rays Schreber boasts of being able to look upon with his naked eyes, is in th