Solution and Salvation

Daniel Paul Schreber’s „Cultivation of Femininity”

European Journal of Psychoanalysis 31, 2010 (Nr. II), 121-140.

Summary:

Daniel Paul Schreber who was imprisoned as a „paranoic” in the Sonnenstein Asylum in Pirna/Saxony (1894-1902) describes in his „Memoirs of a Nervous Patient” the torments to which he was subjected while he „was completely filled by holy ideas about God and the Order of the World”. This book, originally written only for his wife, was first published 1903 in Germany and later translated into multiple languages and interpreted over and over again by psychiatrists, psychoanalysts and other authors of science and literature. So Schreber became the most famous patient in the history of psychiatry. In this paper Schreber’s unmanning – the central „miracle” which he experienced during his „holy time” — is interpreted as a wishful fantasy: Schreber had to become a woman, when he — after six miscarriages with his wife — wanted to fulfil his child-wish. So he dedicated himself to the „cultivation of femininity” — not to fulfil a homosexual desire but to become a wife and by this transformation to become a father!

Keywords:

Psychiatric Diagnosis — Paranoia, Unmanning and Homosexuality — Loss of Ego-Boundaries and Reconstruction — Delusion and Religion

If only Daniel Paul Schreber, who had been named senate president in 1893 (or, in today’s terminology: presiding judge) to the royal appeal court, had talked with his wife more often! The hell of solitude, in which he suffered so miserably, would have been more tolerable for him. But while he was still a free man, he had, because of an excess of work, too little time for his wife. However, when he had found, due to psychiatric disorders treated by Professor Flechsig in the „Nerve Clinic” of the Leipzig University that he could no longer converse with his wife, his wife had quickly „evaporated”.

It happened like this: „My wife, who until just now was with me for an hour daily and had also taken lunch with me in the hospital, [took] a four day trip to Berlin to visit her father.” This separation was too much for Schreber. He experienced it as a traumatic shock. He suffered, to use his own words, a nervous breakdown.

Afterward, he found himself in such a sorry state that he no longer wanted to show himself to his wife.  Therefore, her visits fell temporary by the wayside. And when, „after a relatively long time”, Schreber saw her again, the world — and with it his perception of his wife — had fundamentally changed:

„Such important changes had meanwhile occurred in my environment and in myself that I no longer considered her a living being, but only thought I saw in her a human form produced by miracle in the manner of the ‘fleeting improvised-men’” (Schreber 1903, p. 44).

Schreber could not hold a conversation with this fantastic woman-form.  But there soon came a surrogate for his vanished wife, because now appeared „the first signs of communication with supernatural powers” (ibid). With that began Schreber’s „holy time” (p. 63), which should have come soon after a „cruel time”, indeed, in his own words, „a bitter school of suffering” (p. 31). In recollection of this period, writes Schreber:

„When I think of my sacrifices through loss of an honourable professional position, a happy marriage practically dissolved, deprived of all the pleasures of life, subjected to bodily pain, mental torture and terrors of a hitherto unknown kind, the picture emerges of a martyrdom which all in all I can only compare with the crucifixion of Jesus Christ” (p. 293).

Schreber was soon beleaguered by a dismal silence. He tried to drown out this silence with screaming. This was the so-called „bellowing miracle”, as claimed by Schreber in one of his invented neologisms (see Martin 2007). But that also did not help Schreber any further, because his doctor considered the shouting as a symptom of his illness. He discovered, on the contrary, that this was one of the many miracles which the supernatural powers perpetrated upon his body — indeed, even upon his gender. „Hardly a single limb or organ in my body” escaped this. Schreber viewed these miracles as part of a private religion: „From the first beginnings of my contact with God up to the present day my body has continuously been the object of divine miracles” (p. 148).

Schreber had lost his wife — or, to say it more accurately, he had lost emotional contact with his wife. Because of this, he went inside his own (inner) world. These bereavements had to be balanced — the lost world had to be reconstructed.  Schreber searched for the solution to this problem — and he found deliverance: He became his own wife. The central miracle, therefore, consisted of Schreber’s unmanning. It began with „the (external) male genitals (scrotum and penis) being retracted into the body and the internal sexual organs being at the same time transformed into the corresponding female sexual organs, a process which might have been completed in a sleep lasting hundred of years, because the skeleton (pelvis, etc.) had also to be changed” (p. 53). From this, Schreber also lost his „beard and particularly [his] moustache”, which until then he had worn so proudly. And finally came a „change in my whole stature (diminution of body size) — probably due to a contraction of the vertebrae and possibly of my thigh bones” (p. 149).

So far, so good. But what is the meaning of the many other miracles, which brought with them not merely a new life as a woman, but rather new kinds of sorrows? For example: the miracle of the „lung worm”, whose „appearance was connected with a biting pain in the lungs” (p. 150). And there was the „compression-of-the-chest-miracle”, by which „the whole chest [was] compressed” (p. 151), until there was no more air left to breathe. Then also „some of my ribs were sometimes temporarily smashed” (ibid), a process which was pure bedlam, because subsequently the bones were put back together again. And sometimes Schreber even had to manage completely without a stomach:

„Food and drink taken simply poured into the abdominal cavity and into the thighs, a process which however unbelievable it may sound, was beyond all doubt for me as I distinctly remember the sensation. In the case of any other human being this would have resulted in natural pus formation with an inevitably fatal outcome; but the food pulp could not damage my body because all impure matter in it was soaked up again by the rays. Later, I therefore repeatedly went ahead with eating unperturbed, without having a stomach” (p. 152).

And that Schreber did with great gusto, even then, when the miraculous occurrences invariably knocked him head over heels. „Of other internal organs I will only mention the gullet and the intestines, which were torn or vanished repeatedly, further the pharynx, which I partly ate up several times […]” (p. 153).

But that was not the end of it. For there were also the „so-called ‘little men’”, who tried to „pump [Schreber’s] spinal cord out” (p. 154). Then one of them wanted „to pull the nerves out of my head” (p. 155). And there finally occurred „serious devastation […] caused in my head by the so-called ‘flights of rays’, a phenomenon difficult to describe, the effect of which was that my skull was repeatedly sawn asunder in various directions” (ibid).  The suffering was still not over. It even happened that „the liquids of the food I had taken were by miracle placed on the nerves of my head, so that these were covered with a sort of paste, and the capacity to think temporarily impaired; I remember distinctly that this happened once with coffee” (p. 156).

Finally, Schreber made the decision to give a written statement about all the torments to which he was subjected. In the Sonnenstein Asylum in Pirna (Saxony), in which he was imprisoned from June 1894 until December 1902, he produced a memorandum, i.e., memoir, in which he depicted the „personal experience and religious ideas” (p. 1, footnote) which had troubled him so. These records were originally intended for his wife and his next-of-kin. They — at the very least they — should understand, what happened to him, while he became a woman — they should recognize, that he was not insane, like his doctor claimed, but rather a decent fellow, who patiently endured his troubles in order to redeem himself and his world.

Then Schreber pulled himself together — and directed his thoughts to the rest of humanity:  „During the course of writing the present essay it occurred to me that it could perhaps of interest to a wider circuit” (ibid). And so, under the title „Memoirs of a Nervous Patient” („Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken”), he made his private revelations known to the public.

In addition to descriptions of all the miracles and torments, the book contained a „preface” and „An Open Letter to Professor Flechsig”, as well as a juridical answer to Schreber’s question: „Under what grounds can a person considered insane be detained in an asylum against his declared will?” (p. 363 f).

Schreber composed this formal pleading as a lawyer. He brought it forward to the court, to whom he applied for the annulment of his incompetency. The judges did not go easy on him with their decision. In the opinion of the court, they initially cited the existing psychiatric expertise, in which it stated, Schreber was „dominated by delusions”.

He „considered himself chosen to redeem the world and to restore to it the lost state of Blessedness. […] A person influenced by such delusions and hallucinations is no longer master of his own free will.  He is subject to external influences independent of his own will, against which he is powerless, and which render him incapable of managing his actions and affairs according to practical and reasonable deliberation” (p. 475).

Insofar as the opinion of the asylum superintendent Dr. Guido Weber, was concerned, the judges followed his verdict — in part: „The court is in no doubt that the appellant is insane, one would not wish to argue with him whether in fact he suffers from a mental illness known as paranoia” (p. 494). But the judges disagreed with the expert’s conclusion, that because of his mental illness Schreber was not legally competent and therefore placed under tutelage. They delivered a well-reasoned judgment:

There are „numerous paranoiacs who, despite severe mental derangement, […] [can] carry on their daily business correctly. One might consider them peculiar, call them whimsical and think that they have fixed ideas, but as a rule one does not think of placing them under tutelage” (p. 497).

What would happen, if you were to lock up everybody for every harmless error? The world would be almost deserted …

Last but not least, with the help of his legal arguments, the judges declared that he was possessed of a keen intellect, and that he was in the position to manage his own affairs in an orderly manner. Thus, they annulled his incompetency. And so, in December of 1902, Schreber became a free man once again.

„And so I believe I am not mistaken in expecting that a very special palm of victory will eventually be mine. I cannot say with any certainty what form it will take. As possibilities I would mention that my unmanning [which, at the time of the writing of the „Denkwürdigkeiten” was not yet entirely completed — B. N] will be accomplished with the result that by divine fertilization offspring will issue from my lap, or alternatively that great fame will be attached to my name surpassing that of thousands of other people much better mentally endowed” (p. 293).

The last part of this prophecy came true quite rapidly: The text, with which Schreber had so bizarrely inaugurated the 20^th Century, made him the most famous patient in the history of psychiatry. The book was translated into multiple languages, and it was republished over and over again. Thus, on the occasion of the 100^th Anniversary of the first edition, two reissues appeared in the German language: A facsimile-reproduction of the first edition from 1903 (after which the present text is cited); and a new edition.

If we attempt to understand Schreber’s prophecy not in a literal sense, but rather as a metaphor, then it follows that he should have countless descendents. And so it came to pass — without any kind of divine intervention, but namely with the help of poets and thinkers, artists and composers — that Schreber’s text-body constantly breathes new life in the essays, paintings, and compositions continually being created by new individuals in the Schreberian spirit. And so, after a hundred years, a mountain of analysis and commentaries accumulated about Schreber, whose soul disappeared under it, one book, essay, and picture at a time.

This mountain was finally transcended by Zvi Lothane, one piece at a time. Thus, he encompassed — understood in the literal sense — a century’s work, in the title „Soul Murder and Psychiatry” and subtitle „In Defense of Schreber” making it clear what it is about: Schreber should be freed from the legends which have threatened to swallow him. His life should be understood empathetically. Therefore author Schreber, buried under a mountain of interpretations and academic critiques of the „Denkwürdigkeiten” must become visible once more as a Person — as a suffering person.

Therefore, Lothane also questions the psychiatric diagnosis: Was Schreber paranoid as his doctor depicted him or schizophrenic as others diagnosed him? Or did he suffer from a completely different psychiatric disorder? In Lothane’s opinion, in 1893 Schreber from a severe, i.e. psychotic, depression, a differential diagnosis that was not made when Schreber was still alive. And so, Lothane denies the diagnosis „paranoia (insanity)”, against which the senate-president himself had already raised an objection. This diagnosis was „a blow in the face of truth, which could hardly be worse”, states Schreber. (1903, p. 405). And Lothane confirms that Schreber is right: „I fully agree with Schreber and will show that Schreber suffered from a mood disorder” (2004, p. 17).

Along with this, Lothane also disposes of the traditional psychoanalytic thesis, whereby the „analysis of our dear and ingenious friend Schreber” (letter of Freud to Jung of 31.10.1910, p. 368) that disclosed „paranoiacs are unable to prevent the re-cathexis of their homosexual leanings.  Which brings the case into line with our theory” (letter of 1.10.1910, p. 358). This „homosexual interpretation”, which many psychoanalysts had upheld „as dogma, well into the 1970’s”, and „is still adhered to in many circles” (Lothane 2004, p. 485), was cemented by Freud (circa 1911) in his essay about Schreber with recourse to the text of the „Denkwürdigkeiten” (for post-analytical discussion with Freud see Allison et al. 1988). Lothane argues:

„[…] although such a homosexual dynamics per se contains a measure of truth, it cannot be considered as (1) a universal etiological formula, (2) represents a confusion — and a conflation — of gender identity and homosexual desire, (3) homosexuality has been disproved in the case of Schreber”. He adds: „In applying his homosexual theory to Schreber Freud paid but the most superficial attention to Schreber’s actual heterosexuality. Instead of analyzing the latter, Freud predominantly propounded a homosexual dynamic in accordance with which he read into Schreber both ideational content and intent” (2004, p. 485).

Freud chose and combined selected experiences from Schreber, with which he — as prepared by him beforehand — could confirm the elaborated theory of paranoia. This occurred at a time, in which Freud turned away disappointedly from the men, for whom he had the highest expectations (like in Alfred Adler or C. G. Jung), and railed loud and clear against this diagnosis of „paranoia”. Lothane’s conclusion is therefore as follows: that the acceptance of a coherency between (repressed) homosexuality and (manifested) paranoia through the Schreber case is not confirmed.

Freud deals with the father, Dr. Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber (1808-1861), much more considerately as he did with the son, Dr. Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911). This doctor had made a name for himself as an educational reformer, who

„championed promoting the harmonious upbringing of the young, of securing co-ordination between education at home and in the school, of introducing physical culture and manual work with the view of raising the standards of health — all this exerted a lasting influence upon his contemporaries.  His great reputation as the founder of therapeutic gymnastics is still shown by the wide circulation of his „Medical Indoor Gymnastics” [„Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik”, 1855] in medical circles and the numerous editions through which it passed” (Freud 1911c, p. 51).

Even today, the memory of him endures in the name „Schreber-garden”, even though Schreber Senior was by no means the originator of the (named after him) garden-movement, which originated in the 19^th century, whereby city-dwellers enjoy growing their own fruits and vegetables.

The critique concerning Schreber’s father goes back further than Freud. In fact it was other authors — Morton Schatzman (1973) or Katharina Rutschky (1977) — who later stigmatized the medical-pedagogic instructions of this doctor as a manifestation of an authoritarian spirit. Lothane raises an objection against that, too: The work of Schreber’s father is to be appreciated in the context of the time in which he lived, and not to be misinterpreted as a chapter out of the history of „black pedagogy”, or to be denounced as the prescription of fascist lifestyle. By the same token, Lothane objects resolutely to the portrait that Elias Canetti (1960) had drawn of Schreber Jr., who had placed the senate president in the same category of the egomaniacally insane, such as Genghis Khan, Tamer an, and Adolf Hitler.

Other authors and artists denounced Schreber not as a megalomaniac paranoiac, rather they follow his self-conception as a kind of a modern Job, who should liberate the world through his suffering (see Lothane, 1998).  This spiritual knowledge that Schreber acquired, had — according to his testimony — cost him dearly. Indeed, he had to pay for it with the total loss of his happiness and enjoyment of life. Thus, Schreber appeared in an opera by Peter Androsch: as a modern man of sorrows.  And so the acoustic sensations in the radio play by Martin Burkhardt about Schreber resonate like the explosions in the head of a man who has endured all the horrors of this world.

Finally, Martin Kippenberger brought to paper yet more „People of the Schreberian Spirit” — people like you and I, who move like machines.  And so one could no longer merely behold the Schreberian machine-people in the mind’s eye, but rather now see them in real life — for instance, in the Saxony Psychiatric Museum of Leipzig, in which Kippenberger’s findings were exhibited on the occasional of the hundred year anniversary of the publication of the „Denkwürdigkeiten” in 2003. (Catalog of the Exhibition: Müller 2004).

These man-machines remind us again of the orthopedic-pedagogic literature composed by Schreber’s father. In this, a „Geradhalter” [literally, straight-holder] for children and adolescents was advocated, which would ensure that one can maintain one’s posture later as an adult, in every situation; and another, a „Kinnband” [chin-strap] is described, which, when buckled around the head, would ensure that one would hold one’s head high — and that one cannot lose this posture in any situation even later in adulthood.

These postural regulations, as conceived by the father, fostered an intimate connection between man and machine in the mind of the son. Gerd Busse (2003) discussed this in a commentary to the facsimile-edition of the „Denkwürdigkeiten”. A sequel to the above comes from Wolfgang Hagen (2003), who, like Elisabeth Schreiber (1987) and Lothane (1992) before him, interpreted Schreber’s brainchildren in the context of spiritualistic beliefs and technical innovations of the time in which the author of the „Denkwürdigkeiten” lived. Hagen places Schreber’s „Denkwürdigkeiten” in the genre of autobiographical-psychopathological literature in which the magical body-and-soul ideas, which traditionally come out of olden days, are coupled with the spirit of modern invention. Thus Schreber writes, for example, about the concept coined by him, the

„fleeting-improvised-men”, which „was Flechsig’s soul’s favorite expression, following its tendency when referring to supernatural matters, to replace the basic language by some modern-sounding and therefore almost ridiculous terms. Thus it also liked to speak of a ‘principle of light-telegraphy’, to indicate the mutual attraction of rays and nerves” (Schreber 1903 p. 118, footnote 58).

And since the radio can receive electromagnetic waves, and that then he could — more intelligibly for the listener — reproduce messages with it, is the radio-metaphor imported from Hagen (that Schreber himself used) well-suited to be the pictorial representation of Schreber’s experience and his endeavors, in order to make it understandable for the rest of humanity. The supernatural rays robbed Schreber first of his sleep and then also of his penis. He interpreted these (and other) of his suffered torments as — next to him self understandably — subtexts, which he then communicated in his work in order to make it understandable for other people, too.

Schreber was only but one of the first people who had to experience the connection of soul and machine as holy horrors. Already a half century before him the commercial traveler Friedrich Krauss had made his voice heard with the „Distress Call from a Victim of Magnetic Poisoning” („Nothschrei eines Magnetisch=Vergifteten“, 1852), with which he wanted to make noticeable the torturous „facts” of his surroundings, „explain[ing] through unvarnished description of the course of events over 36 years, documented with all evidence and testimonies, to the instruction and warning especially for family-men and business-people”, as stated in the subtitle cited by Hahn et al. (2002, p. 35-37). Thus Krauss, like Schreber after him, was delivered by uncanny powers, which terrified him greatly.  And like with Schreber, this power guided the secret cooperation of „electricity and magnetism, the eternal stand-in of physics” (Hahn et al., p. 50), thus torments of all kinds for Krauss, such as „messed up teeth, painful erections, lung damage, burns on the soles of the foot, sneezing, back-pain, burning in the ears, pain while yawning, sore larynx or stomach, and toothaches” (cf. Rieger 2002, p. 162).

This matter, as described by Krauss, is „reflected again the influence of Mesmer”, whose teachings of animal magnetism and vital fluid — through which all people are connected with the totality of nature — influenced many minds in the 18^th century. In the 19^th century, one could access still yet other „varieties of radiation (uranium rays, Roentgen rays, radio waves and cosmic rays) that were widely discussed after 1895”, like Lothane (2004, p. 531, footnote 39) explicates, which in this context highlights the influence of occult literature on Schreber — for example du Prel, who had pontificated in 1899 about „Magic as Science” in two parts: part one, „The Magical Physics”; and part two, „The Magical Psychology”.

The experiences depicted by Schreber can be explained with the help of the following psychoanalytic metaphor: after the experienced traumatic separation from his wife, Schreber’s ego-boundary — which before was already unstable — collapsed entirely. With recourse to the radio-metaphor, it allows us, then, to thus describe the psychological situation he had entered:  Schreber was now adjusted to be unremittingly „on standby” — and, at the same time, continuously „on the air”.

He now saw the tree of knowledge, which he was himself, always growing new fruit, of which he wanted report the findings. But as soon as he conveyed this to himself, in order to calm himself down, he went wild with panic, then everything, which he now said, spoke against him, because the doctors interpreted Schreber’s communication as proof of his insanity. Thus Schreber silenced himself.  But then, he could no longer bear his silence. Now he shouted. And because he shouted, the doctors really considered him crazy. In which languages, then, should Schreber — indeed even could he — have spoken, without being held by the doctors as crazy?

Schreber had piped up and spoken in a thousand tongues about his miraculous sensations and visions — and was therefore declared legally incompetent. Thus, there remained for him nothing other than writing a book, if he wanted to liberate himself. And so he wrote a book, in which anyone can find what he wanted: Schreber’s insanity — his own particular brand of lunacy.

The judges who had annulled Schreber’s incompetency declared that Schreber’s insanity was essentially fixed — that it was no longer a concern to either academic or institutional psychiatry but rather Schreber’s private matter. They set  him free — and with that, each and every one of us — to have the right to his own insanity, which is to be tolerated so long that it doesn’t hurt anybody else. Director Guido Weber, in whose asylum Schreber had the right, as a de luxe class patient (Pensionär), to dine at the director’s table, while „grimacing, screwing up of his eyes, [and] the extraordinary position of his head” (1903, p. 466), saw it differently. Weber believed that Schreber’s thoughts and sensations were safer behind the solid walls of the asylum than in freedom, within his own fragile ego-boundary.

For Weber, Schreber was a pathological case — a clear case of „paranoia”. But what does that even mean? „Who is to say, what is pathological? The government? „This question was posed by none other than that intelligent lunatic, anti-psychiatrist Oskar Panizza. Almost ten years younger than Schreber, he had already made a name for himself as a poet and an anarchist, before he — after a sustained persecution by the police and courts — then certified himself paranoid and betook himself voluntarily to a psychiatric institution in order to elude his persecutors. Panizza could thus resort to his own experience, as he asserted, „’pathological’ — that is a truly confusing one, as an informative concept” (cited in Müller 1999, p. 99).

Indeed, so it is: concepts and definitions create clarity, but that does not by any means imply that they bring more truth to light. In the case of Schreber, more clarity is obtained if you set aside the diagnoses of the psychiatrists and examine Schreber’s self-diagnosis more closely. By no means did Schreber ever claim that he was not ill. Indeed, he was suffering from a nervous disorder — that much he knew. But he was not psychotic, he insisted, thus not legally insane.  But why did Schreber speak about his nervous-disorder and not about his psychosis?  Because he agreed with the opinion of a man, in whom he initially had placed the highest hopes to be healed, and by whom he in the end felt so very disappointed (and deceived): Doctor Paul Flechsig, Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Leipzig.

Schreber had probably read a couple of books of this man. In any case, he knew that Flechsig only believed in the „soul” conditionally, but believed in the brain and the nerves absolutely. Flechsig had already problematized the term „Geisteskrankheit” [mental disorder] in his inaugural lecture, „Die körperlichen Grundlagen der Geistesstörungen” (the bodily basis of mental disorders) (1882). He wanted to replace it with the „correct word Nervenkrankheit [nervous illness]” (cf. Steinberg 2001, p. 58). Apart from that, Flechsig was a psychiatric nihilist. That means, he believed that the possibility of curing his patents was very unlikely. „You know, I’ve never been interested in psychiatry — I consider it to be a completely hopeless science”, he remarked to Oswald Bumke, his successor to his Leipzig professorship. Flechsig’s confession was underlined through Bumke’s description of the psychiatric institute still conveyed by Flechsig. „The clinic looked like a dungeon, a cell, behind bars, straightjackets, hammocks stretchers, and still present, fear of the mentally ill” (Bumke 1952 – cf. n. Steinberg 2001, p. 47. f.).

This aforementioned passage of Bumke confirms the credibility of Schreber, who in his „Memoirs”, had very precisely described „Flechsig’s Hell” (1903, p. 95), which he must have gotten to know internally. After that Schreber came into the „devil’s kitchen” (p. 117) — which means, he had been detained in the Sonnenstein asylum for years, in which he brought the „Memoirs” to paper and out of which he finally again would be released into freedom.

When passing through all these underworlds page for page, Schreber’s „nervous illness” turns into some kind of a „soul sickness”, which he himself understood as an ordeal imposed on him by God, while his doctors meant, he had now become definitively insane.

And, thanks to the treatment of Professor Flechsig, Schreber’s unhappiness had no end, rather — as Schreber himself wrote — even had just begun. Therefore, the „Memoirs” stand as an open letter to this doctor. With that, Schreber followed a dual strategy: on one hand, he accuses Flechsig — and on the other, says to him that he’s free. That means, Schreber doesn’t hold Flechsig responsible as a person — rather he accuses Flechsig’s „nerves”, which had — aided by the power of God — contrary to the order and customs of the world, seized possession of his soul, and with that had continually driven out his abuse.

„In this way a plot was laid against me, the purpose of which was to hand me over to another human being after my nervous illness had been recognized as, or assumed to be, incurable, in such a way that my soul was handed to him but my body — transformed into a female body and, misconstruing the above-described fundamental tendency of the Order of the World — was then left to that human being for sexual misuse and simply ‘forsaken’, in other words left to rot. […] Naturally such matters were not mentioned by Professor Flechsig when he faced as a human being.  But the purpose was clearly expressed in the nerve-language­, […] that is, in the nerve contact which he maintained at the same time as a soul.  The way I was treated externally seemed to agree with the intention announced in the nerve language; for weeks I was kept in bed and my clothes were removed to make me — as I believed — more amenable to voluptuous sensations, which could be stimulated in me by the female nerves which had already started to enter my body; medicines, which I am convinced served the same purpose, were also used; these I therefore refused, or spat out again when an attendant poured them forcibly into my mouth.  Having, as I thought, definitely come to realize this abominable intention, one may imagine how my whole sense of manliness and manly honour, my entire moral being, rose up against it, all the more so as I was stirred at that time by the first revelations about divine affairs which I had received through contact with other souls, and was completely filled by holy ideas about God and the Order of the World” (p. 56 ff.).

And why was out of „nervous illness”, which thanks to Schreber Flechsig had originally located, such a long-lasting torture? The search for an answer to this question preoccupied Schreber. In „Open Letter” he gives a hint: shortly before the publishing the „Memoirs”, „a new idea which might possibly lead to the correct solution of the problem” occurred to him.  And it was written to Flechsig,

„the first impetus to what my doctors always considered ‘mere hallucinations’ but which to me signified communication [the German word here is ‘Verkehr’, which can also be translated as ‘intercourse’] with supernatural powers, consisted of influences on my nervous system emanating from your nervous system”. It would therefore be possible, „that you — at first as I am quite prepared to believe only for therapeutic purposes — carried on some hypnotic, suggestive, or whatever else one could call it, contact with my nerves, even while we were separated in space”.  And then so remained the „mild reproach […], that you, like so many doctors, could not completely resist the temptation of using the patient in your care as an object for scientific experiments apart from the real purpose of cure, when by chance matters of the highest scientific interest arose. One might even raise the question whether perhaps all the talk of voices about somebody having committed soul murder can be explained by the souls (rays) deeming it impermissible that a person’s nervous system should be influenced by another’s to the extent of imprisoning his will power, such as occurs during hypnosis; in order to stress forcefully that this was a malpractice it was called ‘soul murder’” (p. IX f.).

Schreber wants to air a secret — the secret of the „scientific experiments”, that Flechsig had performed on him.  Wounded and arrested by his aggression, he incriminates him with this offense. The code word in this context reads: „Soul Murder”. And further: Flechsig attempted, with the help of God, to emasculate Schreber.  But in this experiment, Flechsig and God had won a Pyrrhic victory!  They had been mistaken, when they believed that they could damage Schreber, when they wanted to make him into a woman. They had no idea, that they could have benefited Schreber with this. Through their conspiracy, they became involuntary accomplices of Schreber, who indeed had to become a woman, when he now finally wanted to fulfill the child-wish himself — after six miscarriages with his wife. That is the central wish: Schreber wanted to become a father!

This is not simply a wish for homosexual intercourse. On the contrary, Schreber dedicated himself to the „cultivation of femininity” (p. 178) in order to finally be able to bring a child into the world all by himself. He preferred this „cultivation” in the course of time much better. „I would like to meet the man who, faced with the choice of either becoming a demented human being in male habitus or a spirited woman, would not prefer the latter” (ibid). Schreber preferred the latter, and so put on women’s clothing. He emblazoned himself with colorful ribbons, and luxuriated in the notion that the cohabitation of man and woman could be experienced together.

Also by this androgynous-narcissistic idea Schreber remains a decent fellow. As such he praised the highest sensuality and increased principle of abstinence (austerity) with these words:

„In order not to be misunderstood, I must point out that when I speak of my duty to cultivate voluptuousness, I never mean any sexual desires towards other human beings (females), least of all sexual intercourse, but that I have to imagine myself as man and women in one person having intercourse with myself, or somehow have to achieve with myself a certain sexual excitement etc. — which perhaps under other circumstances might be considered immoral — but which has nothing whatever to do with any idea of masturbation or anything like it” (p. 282).

With the help of fantasy, Schreber had overcome all oppositions. He had united them all in one — that is to say: in his — person. Now he was a man and a woman at the same time. Now he was: everything! And so he had to fear no separation, no loss (of his wife) and no loss of himself. With that, Schreber had (without intending to do this) produced a counter-model to Otto Weininger’s book, „Gender and Character” („Geschlecht und Charakter”), which was published in the same year (1903) as the „Memoirs”.  While Weininger strictly separated masculinity and femininity — condemning the femininity (within himself) as the root of all evil and glorifying masculinity (Nitzschke, 1980) — Schreber made the best of his adversity, amalgamated masculinity and femininity (within himself), and bid farewell with the following words of machismo, by which he had paid homage to his illness: „The pursuit of my previous profession, which I loved wholeheartedly, every other aim of manly ambition, and every other use of my intellectual powers in the service of mankind, are now all closed to me through the way circumstances have developed […]” (p. 178).

But now Schreber has been handsomely rewarded: as part of his unmanning, he succeeded in expressing his innermost being.  And so he brought himself to the world through a book.  In the figurative sense, the „Memoirs of a Nervous Illness” are thus understood as blood from Schreber’s blood, even — Schreber’s child.

Translated from the German by Daniel Fishkin

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