The "Psychotic" German Judge Who Changed Freud's Practice |
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Paul Schreber won his own release from an asylum by legally outwitting his psychiatrist.
Schreber argued that neurodiverse states offer unique, valuable insights beyond mere illness.
Psychiatrists today often don't know Schreber, despite his impact on psychiatric theory.
Paul Schreber—who would probably be voted the most popular psychiatric patient of all time, if such a category existed—was a German judge who died in 1911. That was eight years after he fired his lawyer, represented himself, and won his own release from a lifetime commitment to an asylum called Sonnenstein. Schreber wrote a memoir, translated into English as Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, which includes the stunning documents he filed with the Dresden court.
Schreber, who would legally outwit his own psychiatrist, was paradoxically beloved by psychiatric thinkers. Sigmund Freud adored his “wonderful Schreber, who ought to have been made a professor of psychiatry and director of a mental hospital.” Others who admired the judge and wrote about him include Carl Jung, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze, and Felix Guattari. Dozens of books about Schreber exist, including fictionalizations and analyses of Schreber as a lawyer. A film and stage plays about him also exist.
Schreber’s so prominent in the world of psychiatric theory that for years I asked every psychiatrist I met, including socially, what they thought of his book. The question led to many dinner party fails—to date, not a single doctor I’ve asked knew Schreber even existed, which made sense when I learned how psychiatrists are educated. They receive a medical degree and do years of psychiatric residency, a residency that can look different ways but is often short on psychiatric theory.
In other words,........