Daniel Paul Schreber

The analysis of mental disorders necessarily requires careful and multilayered reflection. Psychiatry is indeed focused on complex phenomena and symptoms that can be only partly traced back to merely quantitative objectifiable data. This is the reason why we witness a growing methodological and conceptual “mutual enlightenment” between philosophy and psychiatry. Whereas philosophy offers notions that can help to take into account also the qualitative aspects and the lived experiences of pathologies, clinical psychiatry seems to represent one of the most relevant practical fields for philosophy to test its explanatory capacity in relation to its many important issues. The history of phenomenological psychopathology, in particular, shows that philosophers have demonstrated a keen interest in the practical consequences of these issues in the field of clinical psychopathology.

It is important to note that, in diagnosing and analyzing some disorders as well as in providing therapeutic instructions, psychiatry turns to concepts that have a pronounced philosophical relevance. Human being, person, self, intersubjectivity, common sense, lived body (Leib) and inanimate body (Körper) are but some of the concepts employed to comprehend several psychopathologies – for instance, those entailing profound emotional and intersubjective disabilities such as schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder and depression. These notions have been the object of lively philosophical discussions. It is therefore quite difficult to imagine, for example, that the connections between time, body and otherness which emerge in certain psychopathologies could be analyzed in complete detachment from the philosophical debate over these issues or without asking whether there is any relationship between mental disorders and the peculiarity of human existence.

Considering these convergences, this special issue offers to its readers a series of contributions that investigate the possible relationships between specific psychopathological symptoms and some crucial philosophical issues from various viewpoints. Joel Krueger and Michelle Maiese argue that the notion of “mental institutions” – discussed in recent debates about extended cognition – can help better understand the origin and character of social impairments in autism, and also help illuminate the extent to which some mechanisms of autistic dysfunction extend across both internal and external factors (i.e., they do not just reside within an individual’s head). In his two papers, John Cutting explores the modus vivendi of schizophrenia and that of depression in relation to Max Scheler's phenomenology. Guido Cusinato develops a critical reflection on Cutting’s proposal, highlighting the intersubjective and enactive dimension of valueception impairments. Underlying  this discussion between Cutting and Cusinato there is a different way of interpreting the relationship between the modus vivendi of schizophrenia and Scheler’s phenomenological reduction. The next issue of the journal will include Cutting’s response to Cusinato’s observations. Guilherme Messas and Melissa Tamelini analyze two concepts of a philosophical origin – that of dialectics and that of essence – which, in their strict application to psychopathology, could be of considerable value for diagnostic purposes and for the introduction and follow-up of therapeutic strategies. Lucas Bloc and Virginia Moirera propose an outline of clinical phenomenology for eating disorders inspired by Merleau-Ponty’s philosophical phenomenology. Francesca Brencio explores the “pathic” dimension of existence, which is the capacity of both being affected and being situated within moods and atmospheres. The broader purpose of her paper is to show how the “pathic” dimension of existence is related to psychopathology and clinical practice, for example in affective disorders and schizophrenia. Valeria Bizzari draws attention to the interaffective and intersubjective dimensions of Asperger’s subjects. Finally, Gilberto di Petta and Mario Rossi Monti highlight the importance of the debate on these issues that took place in Italy, retracing the history of the Italian Society for Phenomenological Psychopathology and the School of Phenomenological-Dynamic Psychotherapy.

There will be a further issue of the journal on this topic. All together, these papers aim to promote a closer comparison and collaboration between psychiatry and philosophy, going beyond a reductive and merely symptomatological conception of mental illness and widening the horizon so as to research areas that so far have remained on the margins of phenomenological psychopathology, such as the dimensions concerning value and affectivity.


John Cutting and Guido Cusinato

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

The paper aims to reconsider the psychoanalytic concept of paranoia so as to apply it to a particular mass case of this disorder responsible for the symbolic construction of “Poland” and “Polish identity” – as exemplified in a 2014’s novel entitled Siódemka [Seven] by Ziemowit Szczerek, a prominent self-proclaimed analytic of Polish culture. Firstly, the paper concentrates on re-interpretation of Freud’s case study of Daniel Paul Schreber – in order to trace the zone of indistinguishability between literature and paranoia (since, as Freud claims, all paranoiacs say what they want to say, there is a clear parallel with the literary mode of expression). Furthermore, the paper draws on Jacques Lacan’s and Eric L. Santner’s investigation into the relation between the outburst of paranoia and the act of investiture. In order to account for this link, it is proposed to understand the onset of paranoia as a result of inability to cope with the dark implicit set of rules that govern practical functioning of the highest posts in the power structure. The paranoiac cannot transform his Big Other into this obscene set of rules and resorts to the imaginary order; s/he creates an imaginary entity (in case of Schreber it is God), which embodies pure obscene power. Thus paranoia allows to avoid the incoherence of the Big Other, because it supersedes it with a tyrannical and all-intrusive persecutor, whose existence is undeniable. The paper propounds that this “imaginary Other” personifies the obscene implicit rules of exerting power. As the symbolic order is replaced with the imaginary, true norms collapse into imaginary norms – irrational, severed from the normative system and demanding bare submission for the sake of submission. Finally, the paper applies thus re-interpreted concept of paranoia to Szczerek’s Seven in order to deduce that: (1) “Poland” as a construct represents the omnipresent and omnipotent imaginary Schreberian God, demanding unconditional submission, (2) it is simultaneously a subject of identification, (3) whenever it becomes a subject of identification, its ruthless demands and imaginary collapse of the symbolic are projected onto external enemies – namely Russia and Germany, (4) thus constructed “Poland” is built on a historical pact of repression, in which centuries of slavery practiced by Polish gentry were forgotten in order to artificially reconcile antagonist classes and unite them against a foreign enemy.

Etwas am Wort Weltanschauung ist bekenntnishaft, es transportiert einen suggestiven Mehrwert, der nicht leicht zu erfassen ist. Adorno konstatiert in der Philosophischen Terminologie, dass es häufig mit einem Possessivpronomen versehen wird: "meine Weltanschauung". Im Grundgesetz der Bundesrepublik Deutschland ist die Freiheit nicht nur des religiösen, sondern auch des „weltanschaulichen Bekenntnisses“ verankert (Art. 4 GG); historisch und systematisch betrachtet ist der Begriff zudem in der Nachbarschaft von Wissenschaft und Ideologie anzusiedeln.
Jede eingehendere Auseinandersetzung mit diesem Kompositum muss sich mit dem aporetischen Verhältnis von Subjektivität und Geltungsanspruch, Relativismus und verabsolutierender Setzung befassen. Dabei handelt es sich bei dem Wort selbst um eine sehr deutsche Angelegenheit. Wie Angst, Besserwisser und Lebensraum, figuriert das Wort Weltanschauung als Lehnwort in zahlreichen anderen Sprachen; es zählt zu den sogenannten Intraduisibles; das Englische world view ist zu optisch, world concept wiederum zu konzeptuell. Es ist die Geschichte deutschsprachiger Philosophie sowie die politische Geschichte Deutschlands überhaupt, die den Ruhm wie die Infamie des Weltanschauungsbegriffs begründet haben.
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Aus der Verlagsankündigung des Lexikons:

"Weltgeschichte, Halbwelt, Weltanschauung: Es gibt keine Welt ohne Welt-Komposita. Das Lexikon entfaltet diese These in 57 Artikeln im Grenzbereich von Essay und Wortgeschichte.
Die Rede von der Welt ist in aller Munde, zumal angesichts der aktuellen Dynamik, die als fortgeschrittene ‚Globalisierung‘ begriffen wird. Besonders in der deutschen Sprache tritt das kleine Wort mit der großen Bedeutung häufig in zusammengesetzten Wörtern auf. Solche Welt-Komposita sind immer auch Verfahren, Welten – die es ja nicht an sich und je schon gibt – zu komponieren, und ihre genauere Analyse ermöglicht Einblicke in die Vielfalt der Kompositionsweisen."

The main research aim of this dissertation is to show the complex and diverse relations between a catastrophic imagination and the so‑called homosexual panic stimulated by homophobically‑oriented reality. More generally, the work concentrates on the issue of a queer modernist identity. The theses are reflected in Freudian interpretation of the case of Paul Daniel Schreber and in the works of selected authors, such as Józef Czechowicz, Stefan Napierski, Stanisław Swen Czachorowski and Tadeusz Olszewski to whom separate studies were devoted.

É célebre a tese de Freud, retirada da leitura do livro de Schreber, de que o delírio é uma tentativa de cura do sujeito psicótico. Já a fase alucinatória da psicose, como lembra Freud, recebe, em geral, menor aprofundamento. Partindo novamente dos escritos de Schreber, o pre-sente trabalho visa extrair, da obra freudiana, uma teoria sobre os sintomas alucinatórios que busque responder qual função a alucinação exerce na estrutura psicótica, principalmente tendo em vista ser esse um sintoma de maior morbidade do que o delírio. Em linhas gerais, esse artigo objetiva esclarecer o que Freud enxergava nas vozes alucinadas pelos psicóticos.

Abstract: The Freudian proposition derived from the reading of Schreber's autobiography is well known: delirium is an attempt to cure in psychotic subjects. Yet hallucinatory phenomena in psychosis, as indicated by Freud, are, in general, less thoroughly examined. Once more starting from Schreber's writings, this article aims at drawing out a theory on hallucinatory symptoms from Freud's work. Such a theory might indicate the function performed by hallucination on the psychotic structure, considering, in particular, that hallucinations are more morbid than deliria as symptoms. In short terms, our intention is to bring to light what Freud has seen in psychotics' hallucinatory voices.

The religious experiences and religious cosmology that the psychiatric patient Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911) described in his memoirs have since their publication in 1903 been interpreted by psychiatrists such as Freud and Lacan as pathological symptoms of an individual mental illness. This dissertation follows however other attempts to place Schreber's Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken in the context of its time, namely by presenting it as the product of a clash of two worldviews. The religious cosmology and experiences that Schreber described were constructed from the dualist transcendent worldview of Schreber's upbringing, and the monist worldview it pitted against, namely that of evolutionist popular-scientists and of psychiatrists who influenced Schreber in the years before his illness. I argue that special characteristics of Schreber's experiences and arguments that can be seen as pathological now emerge as expressions of transcendental dualist cultural concerns or of consequences of an immanent monist worldview. To these belong the disasters Schreber believed resulted from hypnosis allegedly performed on him, the very physical character of Schreber's experiences, his reservations about the ability of language as a tool for revelation, and a new notion of divinity as a mere part of nature. As a result, Schreber's Denkwürdigkeiten emerge as another Zarathustra, as an unusual religious revelatory document engaged with and representative of central religious issues of its time.

University of Chicago German-Jewish studies scholar Eric L. Santner is a singular psychoanalytic thinker. His criticism stands out for the finesse with which he brings Lacanian thought into resonance with Foucault’s ideas about the advent of modernity. To this end, Santner’s My Own Private Germany performs a nuanced meta-reading of Lacan’s reading of Freud’s reading of finde-siècle Saxon jurist Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (1903). Surprisingly, many psychoanalytic humanities scholars have never encountered the Schreber affair and know little of Lacan’s work beyond his “Seminar on The Purloined Letter.” However, the portrait Santner paints of what I call Schreber’s “purloined paranoia” is arguably even more replete with significance for the future of Lacanian thought across the disciplines. His supple analysis of the travails of Schreber’s “psychotic” text, as it passes hands from thinker to thinker, tracks the itinerary of subjectivity in a paranoid milieu defined by the impossibility of a metalanguage or God’s-eye-view. Through this lens, Schreber’s gender-bending text, and the cascade of interpretations it produced (and continues to produce), indexes a modern crisis of sovereignty. This crisis involves the slow hemorrhaging of phallic authority's long-standing libidinal buttressing as the calamity of media modernity sends seismic tremors through the architecture of the Lacanian unconscious. Drawing on the work of Freud, Lacan, Kittler, Dean, and others, this article works through the import of Schreber to our particular historical moment. As Santner’s work reveals, a historiography of Schreber’s text and its cascade of effects gestures toward vital new pathways for Lacanian reading strategies in the digital twenty-first century.

Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts wird zum ersten Mal der Typus des „Querulanten“ beschrieben. Es handelt sich um einen devianten Kläger, der mit unzähligen Schreiben die bürokratische Kommunikation stört, die Arbeitskapazität der Gerichte erschöpft und nötigenfalls mit Waffengewalt um sein Recht kämpft. In dieser Zeit wird das Querulantentum in unterschiedlichen Wissensfeldern virulent. Ausgehend von institutionellen Verordnungen, juristischen Diskussionen und psychiatrischen Falldarstellungen rekonstruiert die Studie erstmals eine systematische Medien- und Literaturgeschichte des Querulierens von der Aufklärung bis in die Gegenwart.

Respuesta a un profano en psicoanálisis sobre el concepto del Otro con mayúscula y el complejo de castración, ese Otro como parte del mundo externo, que nos trasmite el uso del lenguaje, que en un inicio es un amparador, que puede alienarnos en una fantasía de fusión, si no apare el Otro como padre separador. Como ese Otro es tan importante en la fase del espejo, para la constitución del yo (moi), en ese otro virtual, que es un semejante. Lo que ilustro con el caso Juanito y el de los protagonistas de la película de Bernardo Bertolucci, "La luna". Se habla del Otro tachado en el final de análisis, donde ha caído ese Otro que es el Sujeto del Supuesto Saber. Y hablo del Otro en la psicosis de Schreber.

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

ABSTRACT

After Freud’s death, many psychoanalytic researchers showed a close connection between the delusional thoughts of D. P. Schreber, whose book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness was the object of a famous essay by Freud, and the pedagogic methods introduced and practiced by his father, the famous orthopedist and university teacher Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, MD, author of many books on child health and education.
Nobody knows what Ferenczi, at the time of the Palermo incident (1910), could have said about the Schreber case, because of Freud’s refusal of his collaboration in writing the essay.
After this event, Ferenczi spent a long time humiliating himself and submitting to the Master, even though following his own theoretical and therapeutic research, which led him, at the end of his life, to conceive the mechanism of “intropression of super-Ego”, the term employed to  describe the correlation between real persecution and “introjection of the aggressor” in D. P. Schreber’s early infancy and later.
In this paper, the Author examines the concerns and  scientific intuitions of the two protagonists of the Palermo incident, comparing their scientific discoveries and  epistolary exchanges, and accompanying this account with the description of the case of a “contemporary Schreber”.

Keywords: Paranoia, Schreber, Palermo Incident, Ferenczi, Intropression of Super-Ego

RESUMÉ

Depuis le décès de Freud, nombre de chercheurs ont souligné l’étroite connexion entre le contenu des pensées délirantes de D. P. Schreber, dont le livre Mémoires d’un névropathe a fait l’objet du célèbre essai de Freud, et les méthodes pédagogiques introduites et pratiquées par le père du patient, l’orthopédiste et professeur Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, médecin et auteur de plusieurs livres sur la santé et l’éducation morale et physique des enfants.
Personne ne sait ce que Ferenczi, à l’époque de l’«incident de Palerme», aurait voulu ou pu dire à propos du cas Schreber si sa collaboration avait été acceptée par Freud.
Suite à cet épisode, longtemps Ferenczi se soumit à son Maître, tout en suivant ses propres intuitions et recherches scientifiques. Celles-ci l’amenèrent, à la fin de sa vie, à concevoir le mécanisme de l’ «intropression du Surmoi», terme employé pour décrire la corrélation entre la persécution réellement subie  et l’«introjection de l’agresseur» au cours de la petite enfance de D. P. Schreber et par la suite.
Dans cet article, l’Auteur aborde les préoccupations et intuitions scientifiques des deux protagonistes de l’’«incident de Palerme» en comparant leurs découvertes scientifiques respectives et leurs échanges épistolaires et en y adjoignant ses propres réflexions cliniques au sujet d’un “Schreber contemporain”.

MOT-CLÉS: Paranoia, Schreber, Incident de Palerme, Ferenczi, Intropression du Surmoi.

"Então, se através da educação instauramos a norma (busca pela introjeção da lei), educar é castrar. Estaríamos, desta forma, camuflando na Educação processos violentos de perseguição da vivacidade sob os título de nobreza e benevolência que frequentemente a ornamentamos? Existe lugar para o prazer no processo educacional?"


Trabalho dissertativo para a Unidade de Aprendizagem “Estruturas Clínicas em Psicanálise”, ministrada pelo Professor Me. Fred Mendes Stapazzoli Junior.

, be thou anointed! [.. .] My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.

Se habla de la crítica que hace Lacan a Ida Macalpine en torno al delirio de procreación, sin incluirlo en el Edipo, porque nada está por fuera de la triangularidad edípica, aunque el Nombre-del-Padre esté forcluido en lo simbólico, dada la universalidad del complejo de Edipo, que no excluye la psicosis.

despite his personal proximity to Georges Bataille, jacques lacan makes very few direct references to his work. Indeed, the only mention of Bataille’s name in the 878 pages of the Écrits is in a footnote to “on a Question prior to any possible treatment of psychosis.”1 this article declares that daniel schreber, the prototypical psychotic, was exposed to inner experience by his insight that “God is a whore.”2 lacan affirms that his mention of inner experience is an allusion to Bataille, and refers the reader to Inner Experience, which he calls Bataille’s central work; and to Madame Edwarda, in which “he describes the odd extremity of this experience.”3 lacan here identifies the experience of Madame Edwarda with Bataille’s “inner experience,” and stipulates that both are identical to schreber’s psychotic break.

Im Jahr 1903 veröffentlichte der Leipziger → okkultistische Verlag Oswald Mutze ein Buch mit dem Titel Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, in dem der Verfasser schrieb, dass er es für möglich halte, »ja für wahrscheinlich, dass die künftige Entwickelung meiner persönlichen Geschicke, das Bekanntwerden meines religiösen Vorstellungskreises und das Gewicht der Gründe, die für die Richtigkeit desselben sich aufdrängen werden, eine Umwälzung in den religiösen Anschauungen der Menschheit herbeiführen wird, die in der Geschichte ihres Gleichen sucht.« 1 Der Autor der Denkwürdigkeiten glaubte, dass persische Sonnengötter seinen Körper allmählich in einen weiblichen verwandelten und dass diese Tatsache als ein seine Gottgesandtheit bestätigendes Wunder fungieren werde. Die allgemeine Sichtbarkeit dieser wundersamen Wandlung sollte zu einer breiten Akzeptanz der dargestellten religiösen Offenbarungen führen.

Nicht allein die Entdeckung von Radioaktivität und Röntgenstrahlung führte zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts zu einer breiten Begeisterung für das Emanative: Auch die Frage des Elektromagnetismus und das Auftauchen des Radios fütterte die Vorstellung von den unsichtbaren Strahlen, die körperlos im Äther sprechen. Gerade die akustisch-technische Dimension des Gottesgeflüsters wurde lange ignoriert, medientechnische Praktiken und Dinge aus den Bereichen der Telegraphie, Telephonie und Radio waren aber beispielsweise im Feld der Psychiatrie und dann auch der Psychologie reiche Inspirationsquellen. Und mehr noch: Die technischen Dinge, die im Umfeld des Nicht-Wissens des Elektromagnetismus auftauchten, waren nicht allein Metapher für die undarstellbaren Vorgänge des Psychischen, sie wurden Teil einer technischen Selbst-Bildung.  Ein früher Fall dieser strahleninduzierten, medientechnischen Selbst-Bildung im 20. Jahrhundert ist der Fall Daniel Schrebers.

The connexion of intention and the circumstances is plainly of such a nature, as more to depend on the sagacity of the observer, than on the excellence of any role. The pains taken by the civilians on that subject have not been very fruitful; and the English law writers have, perhaps, as wisely, in a manner abandoned the pursuit. In truth, it seems a wild attempt to lay down any rule for the proof of intention by circumstantial evidence; all the acts of the party; all things that explain or throw light on these acts; all the acts of others relative to the affair, that come to his knowledge, and may influence him: his friendships and enmities, his promises, his threats, the truth of his discourses, the falsehood of his apologies, pretences, and explanations; his looks, his speech; his silence where he was called to speak; every thing which tends to establish the connexion between all these particulars;--every circumstance, precedent, concomitant and subsequent, become parts of circumstantial evidence.

Memorias de una sensación-Schreber Marcelo Real "[…] todos los días gozo de ciertos momentos que se repiten bastante a menudo, durante los cuales, podría decirse, nado en la voluptuosidad; un indescriptible bienestar, comparable a la sensación de voluptuosidad [Wollustempfindung] en la mujer, inunda todo mi cuerpo. Para ello, no hace falta que mi fantasía se oriente hacia los juegos sexuales. Si leo un pasaje particularmente hermoso de una obra poética, si toco al piano un trozo que impresiona agradablemente a mi sentido estético [ästhetisch], o si durante una excursión me siento fascinado por un placer particular mientras contemplo la naturaleza, y bien, no es raro que también estas circunstancias provoquen momentos que me hacen saborear anticipadamente la beatitud [Seligkeit empfinde]. Generalmente sólo se trata de sensaciones [Empfindungen] breves, porque en el momento mismo en que culmina la sensación voluptuosa, me envían milagros de dolor de cabeza, o de dolor de dientes, para que la sensación de voluptuosidad [Wollustgefühl], que de otro modo se hubiera impuesto a los rayos, no pueda elevarse en mí." 1 La dimensión de la aísthesis Consideremos las experiencias del presidente Schreber que aparecen condensadas en el epílogo, desde la perspectiva de una analítica de la sensación.

Co powiedziałby Schreber, gdyby dane mu było zapoznać się z interpretacją Freuda? Czy, a jeśli tak, to w jaki sposób, wiedza ta wpłynęłaby jakoś na jego niezachwianą pewność odnośnie własnego doświadczenia? Nie chcę tu bynajmniej sugerować, że to on powinien mieć ostatnie słowo - nikt nie może go mieć. Jeśli rozpatruję kwestię “oddania głosu samemu przypadkowi”, nie mam na myśli przyznania monopolu na prawdę literze - czy też duchowi - tekstu Schrebera. Chodzi mi raczej o uwzględnienie, na tyle, na ile to możliwe, jego jednostkowości, osobliwości (singularité); opisanie procesów, jakie inicjują połączone maszyna szaleństwa i maszyna pisania , sposobu, w jaki łączą się różne ich części, tworząc razem nową jakość, którą decyduję się nazwać maszyną doświadczenia.

W: Lena Magnone, Anna Mach, red., "Wokół Freuda i Lacana. Interpretacje psychoanalityczne", Difin, Warszawa 2009

In the ever growing mass of writing about Schreber, his wife is rarely mentioned. She is not a part of the ongoing case – unlike Schreber's father, psychiatrist, and self-appointed psychoanalyzers. She is not an accomplice, not a witness, not even the accused. For a hundred years or so she didn’t even had a name. Is she is mentioned at all it is only as “Schreber’s wife”.

For Schreber she is “my wife” and for him she is almost everything. Unnamed she is still one of the most important characters in the Memoir itself, from the very first line of the introduction to its postscripts and addenda. She is mentioned constantly, and her presence is a vital part of Schreber’s mental health. In the memoir’s addendum she is also mentioned in the reports given before the court, but doesn't testify herself. Weber, Schreber’s second psychiatrist, speaks for her. The court deals in length with her wellbeing, though no one bothered to interview her directly, or to mention her by name or as anything other than Schreber's wife. She is voiceless, nameless, but none the less a centeral figure in the Schreber’s drama.

In this paper I would suggest that the role of the wife have been understated and overlooked. I will demonstrate that her name and role in the story was forgotten or diminished by all except Schreber himself, and to a small degree by Freud.

I will also, like many of the writers who preceded me, offer a retelling of Schreber’s story. I will follow their example and treat the memoir as a reliable evidence, but unlike them I will not ignore Schreber’s wife. In the same way that others have found the father, the psychiatrist, the German culture of the time, or the man’s own repressed homosexuality, as the leading cause in Shreber’s illness, I will cast for the role his romantic fixation to his wife – a wife that failed him in the only responsibility given to her, that of bearing him children.

Sass, like R. D. Laing before him, wants to make sense of schizophrenic discourse.  In 'Paradoxes of delusion – Wittgenstein, Schreber and the schizophrenic mind' he uses Wittgenstein’s later work, particularly the Blue Book, to this end.  Read criticises Sass for not taking Wittgenstein’s nonsensicalism seriously enough and suggests that some schizophrenic utterances cannot be understood at all.  I argue that Sass’s position is more consistent than Read’s, though it is probably true that Sass is the less thoroughgoing Wittgensteinian.  Read’s way of arguing his case exhibits all the difficulties that those who employ the notion of philosophical nonsense are apt to get themselves into.  The denigratory vocabulary he uses to characterise schizophrenic discourse – ‘confused’, ‘inchoate’, ‘incoherent’, ‘empty’, ‘without content’ – is itself confused and confusing, but, more importantly, his talk of ‘transitional remarks’ and his admission that he is himself ‘trafficking in nonsense’ suggest that he is falling into the very error of which he accuses Sass.

Georg Büchners Fragment gebliebenes Drama Woyzeck (1837/1879) stellt
eine Figur mit selbigem Namen ins Zentrum, die meint, Stimmen zu hören.
Nicht nur leidet Woyzeck an akustischen Halluzinationen, diese drängen ihn
zudem zu einer Mordtat, für die er schließlich hingerichtet werden soll. Von
den diversen akustischen Halluzinationen, die im Clarus-Gutachten auftauchen, greift Büchner allerdings nur eine spezifische Konstellation heraus und montiert sie in sein Stück. Dessen ungeachtet zeigen dort die pietistischen Konventionen, die Sittenstrenge und die im Sprachbewusstsein eingelassenen Imperative eine eigentümliche Gewalt: Sie durchsetzen die Figurenrede, geben sich darin als Rede eines Anderen zu erkennen und können unabsehbare Impulse auslösen. Die gehörten Stimmen operieren dann gleich Vektoren, die einander begegnen oder durchdringen, was sogleich Handlungsketten durchtrennt und neu arrangieren lässt. Das trifft allerdings nicht nur auf die Hauptfigur zu, auch die übrigen Akteurinnen und Akteure zeigen sich von sozialen Imperativen durchherrscht, die einer eigenen Logik folgen.

Resumen

Analizar psicoanalíticamente la escritura de los paranoicos sigue siendo hoy día un campo de activos y controversiales debates, y todos ellos se originan en el análisis del libro “Memorias de un neurópata” de D. P. Schreber. La construcción del historial freudiano que versa sobre Schreber se ha realizado casi exclusivamente a partir de la lectura de este libro, siendo éste un procedimiento metodológico no del todo esclarecido hasta la fecha, especialmente en lo atinente a la fundamentación epistemológica de dicha interpretación.
Estos interrogantes fueron los impulsores de la tesis doctoral denominada “El aporte epistémico-metodológico de la categoría de «texto» de la fenomenología hermenéutica a la interpretación de la escritura paranoica en Freud”, cuyo objetivo principal es establecer los principios epistémico-metodológicos de construcción del historial. En este paper se presentarán a discusión algunos resultados preliminares concernientes a los procedimientos actuales de interpretación del historial de Freud que no han abordado exhaustivamente el hecho de que el mismo autor pensó las “Formulaciones sobre los dos principios del acaecer psíquico” como Prefacio del historial.

Palabras clave: Schreber – metodología – revisión – Prefacio. 


Abstract

The psychoanalytic analyse of writing in paranoia remains nowadays as a field of controversial and active debates, and all of them were originated in Schreber´ s book “Memoires of my nervous illness”. The structure of the Freudian clinical report upon Schreber has been constructed exclusively by the reading of this book, and this methodological procedure has not been completely clarified up to now from an epistemological point of view of this interpretation.
This questions where the propels of the doctoral thesis named “The epistemic and methodological contribution of the category of «text» from the hermeneutic phenomenology to the interpretation of writing in paranoia in Freud”, which main objective was to establish the methodological and epistemic principles of this clinical report. In this paper we will present to discussion some preliminary results concerning the actual interpreting procedures of Freud´ s clinical report that had not highlighted the fact that the author himself thought the “Formulations of the two principles of mental functioning” as a Preface of this clinical report.

Key words:  Schreber – methodology – revision – Preface.

On Freud's case study on Daniel Paul Schreber and Lacan's reading of it. The central aim of this paper is to trace the connection Lacan sees between the rise of modern (natural) science and the structure of psychosis in respect to his theory of subjectivity.

Cet article porte sur André Ondo Mba, personnage excentrique qui couvrent les murs de Libreville de graffitis ésotériques depuis plusieurs décennies. Sa carrière de prophète graffitomane commence par une initiation ratée. Ce ratage marque son échec à s’inscrire dans une tradition rituelle qui repose sur un contrôle de l’interprétation des rêves et des visions des initiés, i.e. sur une certaine manière de cadrer leurs productions fantasmatiques en les intégrant dans le registre du savoir initiatique. Ondo Mba est toutefois parvenu à convertir ce ratage en une réussite inédite, en transformant Libreville en un gigantesque lieu de mémoire autobiographique où consigner ses rêves et ses visions. Ses écritures exposées dans l’espace urbain lui servent ainsi à articuler le rapport problématique entre lui-même et le monde extérieur.