The "Psychotic" German Judge Who Changed Freud's Practice

A German judge, Paul Schreber, died in 1911 after winning his own release from a lifetime asylum commitment at Sonnenstein. He fired his lawyer, represented himself, and used court documents to challenge his confinement. His memoir, translated as Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, includes the filings he submitted to the Dresden court. Schreber became highly influential in psychiatric theory and was admired by major thinkers such as Freud, Jung, Lacan, Deleuze, and Guattari. Despite this prominence, many psychiatrists do not know his work, reflecting gaps in psychiatric education and training. The memoir frames neurodiverse states as sources of insight rather than only illness.

"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."

"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, those who diagnose madness often spend little time thinking about what it means to be mad. For someone like Schreber, the question went to the heart of who he was. His Memoirs, which I wrote about in my bookThe Devil's C"

Read at Psychology Today