{"id":611257,"date":"2026-05-30T00:57:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:57:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/611257\/"},"modified":"2026-05-30T00:57:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-30T00:57:15","slug":"the-psychotic-german-judge-who-changed-freuds-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/611257\/","title":{"rendered":"The “Psychotic” German Judge Who Changed Freud’s Practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Schreber\u2014who would probably be voted the most popular psychiatric<\/a> patient of all time, if such a category existed\u2014was 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. <\/p>\n

Schreber, who would legally outwit his own psychiatrist, was paradoxically beloved by psychiatric thinkers. Sigmund Freud<\/a> adored his \u201cwonderful Schreber, who ought to have been made a professor of psychiatry and director of a mental hospital.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

Schreber\u2019s 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\u2014to date, not a single doctor I\u2019ve asked knew Schreber even existed, which made sense when I learned how psychiatrists are educated<\/a>. 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. <\/p>\n

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 book The Devil’s Castle,<\/a> meditate on spirituality<\/a>, the nature of neurodiversity<\/a>, and the nature of reality. <\/p>\n

Schreber had visions of the divine, including seeing the world laid out from God\u2019s perspective, which he called the \u201cGod-be-together-view.\u201d He sometimes experienced divine assault in the form of nerve rays, and he lived saturated with miracles, some as small as spilled cocoa or a shaving cut. <\/p>\n

Schreber experienced \u201cthe most sublime ideas about God and the Order of the World,\u201d and his time at Sonnenstein asylum included the miracle of his acquiring a feminine identity<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf psychiatry is not flatly to deny everything supernatural<\/a> and thus tumble with both feet into the camp of naked materialism<\/a>,\u201d Schreber wrote, \u201cit will have to recognize the possibility that occasionally the phenomena under discussion may be connected with real happenings.\u201d <\/p>\n

These visions made up Schreber\u2019s \u201cphenomena,\u201d and the court agreed and released him from the asylum. Five judges read Schreber\u2019s book and praised the \u201cseriousness and striving after truth that fill every chapter.\u201d Schreber embodied what philosopher Wouter Kusters describes as the shared concerns of psychosis<\/a> and philosophy<\/a>, including a drive toward infinity and freedom. I call Schreber history\u2019s greatest advocate for the neurodiverse. <\/p>\n

Schreber understood that his behavior, which included periods of stillness and sometimes bellowing, differed from that of most people. He called this behavior the \u201cpathological shell\u201d that concealed his \u201ctrue spiritual life.\u201d He described his mental problems as consisting of troubled nerves\u2014hence the \u201cnervous illness\u201d of the English title\u2014but added in his book that \u201cA person with sound nerves is, so to speak, mentally blind.\u201d <\/p>\n

Schreber believed that what we call neurodiverse states bring with them unique insight. Despite his institutionalization, Schreber researched his condition, reading the works of his soon-to-be-fan Jung as well as modern psychiatry\u2019s \u201cfather,\u201d the problematic Emil Kraepelin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Schreber mocked Kraepelin\u2019s observation that many people who hear voices experience them as more real than actual voices\u2014they are real, he writes, simply a different flavor of real. <\/p>\n

Like those of fellow German Dorothea Buck<\/a>, Schreber\u2019s visions could prove prophetic. When he arrived at Sonnenstein, which became a killing center under the Nazi regime, Schreber smelled \u201cthe reek of corpses.\u201d His voices whispered its real name: the \u201cDevil\u2019s Castle\u201d (hence my book title). This is the profound kind of \u201creal\u201d with which Schreber mocked Kraepelin.<\/p>\n

Psychiatry Essential Reads<\/p>\n

In 2008, psychiatrist Kate Robertson wrote in the British Medical Journal that Schreber\u2019s appeal and the court\u2019s decision \u201cmore than anything else restore my faith in the possibility of a humane psychiatry.\u201d I love this comment and notice that Robertson doesn\u2019t choose a word stronger than \u201cpossibility.\u201d Schreber\u2019s filings changed German law. He still has a lot to say about meaning-making in neurodiverse thought.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s ironic that, for the most part, the people who haven\u2019t gotten the memo on the importance of Schreber are those who would still be tasked with his care. Freud wrote to Jung that studying Schreber\u2019s book changed his clinical practice for the better. <\/p>\n

Had Freud gotten his wish, and Schreber in his lifetime served as an asylum head and professor, Schreber\u2019s beliefs about the value of his own thought might have entered the psychiatric system. I wonder how differently we might handle our Schrebers. Perhaps we\u2019d see more miracle than sickness.<\/p>\n

A Reading List<\/p>\n

And to go with my recommendation that everyone connected to psychiatry read Paul Schreber\u2019s Memoirs, I add a list of recommended reading given to me by Mad in America\u2019s Robert Whitaker, with my descriptions:<\/p>\n

Cracked: The Unhappy Truth About Psychiatry: An expose of how psychiatry became history\u2019s fastest growing medical field, with ample coverage of the pharmaceutical industry and problems with the DSM<\/a> by James Davies. <\/p>\n

DSM: A History of Psychiatry\u2019s Bible: The troubled history of the book that governs psychiatric diagnostics and reimbursement, considering it as a social, financial, and historical document by Allan Horwitz.<\/p>\n

Desperate Remedies: Psychiatry\u2019s Turbulent Quest to Cure Mental Illness: A history of American psychiatry and its foibles, from asylums to pharmaceuticals by Andrew Scull.<\/p>\n

May Cause Side Effects: A Memoir: A harrowing story of antidepressant<\/a> withdrawal and life restored by Brooke Siem.<\/p>\n

Unshrunk: A Story of Psychiatric Treatment Resistance: One woman\u2019s experiences in the psychiatric system, from over-medicated teenager<\/a> to liberated adult who \u201cdares to question the fundamental assumptions of psychiatric treatment\u201d by Laura Delano.<\/p>\n

And I strongly recommend Dorothea Buck\u2019s On the Trail of the Morning Star: Psychosis as Self-Discovery<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paul Schreber\u2014who would probably be voted the most popular psychiatric patient of all time, if such a category…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-611257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}