Enlightment in Schreber
Schreber’s Enlightenment
Daniel Paul Schreber
Daniel Paul Schreber was a German judge who gained notoriety due to his memoir, “Memoirs of a Nervous Sufferer” (Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken), published in 1903. 1. Date of Birth: Daniel Paul Schreber was born on July 25, 1842, in Leipzig, Germany. 2. Education and Career: Schreber studied law and medicine at the University of Leipzig. After completing his studies, he became a judge and worked as a jurist in Leipzig. 3. Mental Illness: In 1884, Schreber began to show signs of mental illness. He was diagnosed with paranoia, a psychotic disorder characterized by delusions of persecution and grandeur, among other symptoms. Schreber believed that God was communicating directly with him and that he had a special mission on Earth. 4. Hospitalization: Due to the severity of his mental condition, Schreber was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Sonnenstein, where he spent several years.
“Memoirs of a Nervous Patient”: During his time in the hospital, Schreber began writing his memoirs. In 1903, his book “Memoirs of a Nervous Patient” was published. In this book, he described his experiences during his illness and his delusional beliefs.6. Legacy: Schreber’s book became a famous work in psychiatry and psychoanalysis, as Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalysts studied it in depth. Freud, in particular, used Schreber’s experiences as a case study in his work on psychosis and delusions.7. Death: Daniel Paul Schreber died on April 14, 1911, in Dresden, Germany.
God and Immortality
A Crisis of the Kingdoms of God? Soul Murder
.Not printed.
Personal experiences during the first nervous illness and beginning of the second
Continuation. Language of the nerves. Inner voices.. Coercion to think. Emasculation, a postulate of the Order of the World in the face of circumstances
Personal experiences. Continuation.. Visions. “Visionaries”
Personal experiences. Continuation.; Strange morbid manifestations. Visions
Personal experiences during the stay in Dr. Pierson’s sanatorium. “Tested souls”
Transfer to Sonnenstein. Changes in the relationship with the rays. “Transcription system”
Personal experiences in Sonnenstein. “Disturbances” as a phenomenon concomitant with contact with the rays. “Shaping the state of mind”
Damage to physical integrity through miracles
Content of the conversation of the voices. “Conception of souls”. Language of souls. Continuation of personal experiences;
Voluptuousness of the soul as a factor of attraction. Resulting phenomena
“Tested souls”; their destiny. Personal experiences. Continuation.
Jokes with men and with miracles. Cries for help. Talking birds
Coercionto think. Its manifestations and related phenomena
Continuation of the previous one; “to draw” in the sense of the language of souls
God and the processes of creation; spontaneous generation; miraculous birds. “Direction of gaze”. System of examination
Continuation of the previous one. Divine omnipotence and human free will
Egocentric conception of rays in relation to my person. Further configuration of personal relationships
Beatitude and voluptuousness in their reciprocal relationships. Consequences of these relationships on personal behavior
Final considerations. Future Perspectives
Man, Woman, Body - Voluptuousness and Beatitude - God and Immortality: Future - Free Will - Knowledg…
Man, Woman, Body - Voluptuousness and Beatitude - God and Immortality: Future - Free Will - Knowledge
Theory of Knowledge
Brought into the world by parents
Future of the creature, procreation
How do I maintain myself as I
Imaginary
Constitution of the Subject
Fearing for my life, for my virility and later for my understanding;…
Fearing for my life, for my virility and later for my understanding;
The wandering Jew (in the sense indicated here) must have been emasculated (transformed into a woman…
The wandering Jew (in the sense indicated here) must have been emasculated (transformed into a woman) in order to be able to generate children. Emasculation occurred in the following way: the external sexual organs (scrotum and male member) were retracted into the body and transformed into the corresponding female sexual organs, while the internal sexual organs were also transformed at the same time. It took place during a sleep that lasted several centuries, since a modification of the bone structure (pelvis, etc.) was also necessary. An involution or inversion of the development process also occurred, which in the human embryo takes place in the fourth or fifth month of pregnancy, depending on whether nature wants to give the future child the male or female sex.
It is known that in the first months of pregnancy both sexes are present and that, according to obse…
It is known that in the first months of pregnancy both sexes are present and that, according to observation, the characteristics of the sex that fails to develop, such as male breasts, remain as rudimentary organs at a lower stage of development. The ability to perform the aforementioned miracle of emasculation is inherent in the rays of the lower god (Ahriman); the rays of the superior god (Ormuzd) have the capacity to restore masculinity under certain conditions
The miracles that most closely evoked a situation still in accordance with the Order of the World se…
The miracles that most closely evoked a situation still in accordance with the Order of the World seemed to be those that had some connection with an emasculation to be effected on my body. In this context belong in particular all kinds of modifications in my sexual parts, which sometimes (particularly in bed) appeared as strong indications of an actual retraction of the virile member, but often, when the impure rays prevailed, as a softening of the member, which approached almost complete dissolution; in addition, the miraculous removal of the hairs of the beard, especially the moustache, and finally a modification of theification of the entire stature (decrease in body size) — probably based on a contraction of the spine and perhaps also of the bony substance of the thighs.
This last miracle, coming from the lower god (Ahriman), was regularly announced with the words: “Wha…
This last miracle, coming from the lower god (Ahriman), was regularly announced with the words: “What if I diminished it a little?” I myself had the impression that my body had become six to eight centimeters shorter, thus approaching female height.
Dramatic news arrived from all directions that from then on this or that star, this or that constell…
Dramatic news arrived from all directions that from then on this or that star, this or that constellation would have to be “abandoned”; now it was said that Venus had also been “flooded”, now that from now on the entire Solar System should be “unhacked”, now that Cassiopeia (its entire constellation) should be condensed into a single Sun, now that the Pleiades might still could be saved etc.
It was the idea that it must be really good to be a woman submitting to intercourse. This idea was s…
It was the idea that it must be really good to be a woman submitting to intercourse. This idea was so foreign to my entire way of feeling that, I allow myself to say, in full conscience I would have rejected it with such indignation that in fact, after everything I have experienced in the meantime, I cannot rule out the possibility that it I was inspired by external influences that were at play.
The truth is that these beatitudes were consumed, that is, the nerves in question, as a result of th…
The truth is that these beatitudes were consumed, that is, the nerves in question, as a result of the force of attraction, were absorbed into my body and acquired the character of nerves of feminine voluptuousness, giving my body a more or less feminine, and to my skin, in particular, the softness typical of the female sex.
My sleep had become a sleep of lightning.
In this regard, the idea of “letting myself go”, that is, abandoning myself, was always decisive, …
In this regard, the idea of “letting myself go”, that is, abandoning myself, was always decisive, something that, at the time discussed here, was believed to be possible through emasculation and abandonment of my body like the body of a prostitute. female sex; sometimes also through murder and later through the destruction of my understanding (becoming an imbecile)
That almost the entire population of patients at the clinic, therefore at least several dozen people, bore the mark of personalities who had been more or less close to me in life.
The voices continually sought to incite me against this head nurse; on the first day I was asked to …
The voices continually sought to incite me against this head nurse; on the first day I was asked to address him simply as “W.”, intentionally eliminating the predicate of nobility; At first I had no inclination to do so, but I finally gave in, to free myself from the pressure of the voices. On another occasion, I even slapped him, I don’t remember why; I only know that the voices demanded it of me, because he had wanted something inadmissible from me, and they kept insulting me because of my supposed lack of manly courage, until I proceeded to perform the act previously described.
I spent the whole day engrossed in conversation with the voices and amazed by the prodigious things that were happening around me.
M. and Sch. sometimes also descThey would stick a part of their body into mine, in the form of a rot…
M. and Sch. sometimes also descThey would stick a part of their body into mine, in the form of a rotten mass, with the aim of “getting away”. M. would often place himself on my arm, like a sort of “big nerve” — a kind of gelatinous mass about the size of a cherry — where, like the other nerves and rays, he in a certain way shared my thoughts and sensory impressions. - - the idea of escaping as much as possible from the force of attraction of my overexcited nerves
Books or other types of notes are kept, in which for years all my thoughts, all my expressions of sp…
Books or other types of notes are kept, in which for years all my thoughts, all my expressions of speech, all my personal objects, all the things I own or have near me, all the people with whom I have contact, etc., have been transcribed.
Day after day, hour after hour, they then uninterruptedly accumulated in my body poison from corpses or other putrefied matter, brought by the rays, with the intention of finally crushing me and taking away my understanding.
“But then, hasn’t he been emasculated yet?” Not infrequently, the divine rays, alluding to the suppo…
“But then, hasn’t he been emasculated yet?” Not infrequently, the divine rays, alluding to the supposedly imminent emasculation, thought they could mock me as “Miss Schreber”; some of the expressions that were frequently used and repeated ad nauseam at the time were: “You must be represented as someone given over to voluptuous debauchery” etc. etc. I myself felt the danger of emasculation naturally as an ignominy that threatened me for a long time, that is, as long as there was talk of sexual abuse of my body by other men.
For years now, the lightning bolts, in the absence of their own thoughts, have essentially been unab…
For years now, the lightning bolts, in the absence of their own thoughts, have essentially been unable to speak of anything otherthan their own miracles, attributing to my nerves the ideas of fear that correspond to them, but falsely (for example: “If only my fingers were not paralyzed,” or: “If only my kneecap were not injured”), or even cursing any activity that I begin to engage in (for example: “If only you would stop playing that damned piano” as soon as I sit down at the piano, or again: “If only you would stop cleaning your nails” as soon as I start cleaning my nails). And on top of that, they have the enormous nerve—I cannot resort to another expression—of expecting me to express this falsified nonsense out loud, as if it were my own thought; so that to the sentence “If only you would stop playing that damned piano” is added the question: “Why don’t you say it (out loud)?” — to which the answer follows: “Because I’m stupid, something like that” or “Because I’m afraid of Mr. M.”
It was believed that with the transcription I could exhaust my entire reserve of thoughts…
It was believed that with the transcription I could exhaust my entire reserve of thoughts.
But the main reason for my immobility did not come from the lack, in fact real, of appropriate objects for the exercise of some activity, but from the fact that I considered absolute passivity almost a religious obligation.
The imposition that the rays imposed on me, of total immobility (“Not the slightest movement”, the often repeated phrase told me), in turn, according to my convictions, must be related to the fact that God, so to speak, was not capable of dealing with living men, being accustomed to dealing only with corpses or, in any case, with sleeping men (dreaming).
I made this sacrifice because, even though I had already had several proofs of the “policy of half m…
I made this sacrifice because, even though I had already had several proofs of the “policy of half measures” that God carried out against me, at that time I still did not want to believe in any real ill will of God towards me.
They could not help but see in me a person fallen into stuporous imbecility. And yet, what an immens…
They could not help but see in me a person fallen into stuporous imbecility. And yet, what an immense distance between this appearance and reality: I lived with the awareness — and even today I am convinced that this awareness coincides with the truth — of having to resolve one of the most difficult tasks ever proposed to a human being and having to carry out a sacred struggle for the supreme goods of humanity. But, unfortunately, the deceptive appearance to the contrary resulted in a great deal of indignity in the treatment accorded to me, under which I suffered greatly for years on end, and which sometimes made me completely forget my social position and the high office I occupied in life.
Nurse M. would often send me back to the bath the moment I wanted to get out of the bath, after havi…
Nurse M. would often send me back to the bath the moment I wanted to get out of the bath, after having spent the appropriate time in it, or in the morning, when it was time to wake up, for reasons unknown to me he would send me back to bed, or even during the day, if I had dozed off a little while sitting at the table, he would wake me up by pulling the hairs on my beard; the same nurse would comb my hair during the bath with a fine-toothed comb—and this just at a time when streams of lightning were making furrows in my skull. At meals, for a certain time, he would put a napkin around my neck, like a child.
The food and drink that I had then ingested fell directly into my abdominal cavity and hips, a pheno…
The food and drink that I had then ingested fell directly into my abdominal cavity and hips, a phenomenon, incredible as it may seem, that was completely beyond doubt for me, given the clarity of my perception.
This soul threw the putrefying matter that produced the putrefaction of my lower abdomen into my belly with complete disregard, so much so that I more than once believed that I was rotting alive, and the odor of putrefaction emanated from my mouth in the most repugnant way.
Whose voices I perceived in my feet
One can imagine what unpleasant sensations all these processes must generate, when one thinks that t…
One can imagine what unpleasant sensations all these processes must generate, when one thinks that the rays of the entire world — mechanically fixed at their starting point — are spinning around a single head, trying to tear it apart or burst it, as if in a dismemberment.
The rays seemed not to understand that a man who really exists must be somewhere after all
A part of the rays began to take a liking to penetrating my body
Those that were in charge of opening and closing the eyes were above the eyes, on the eyebrows, and …
Those that were in charge of opening and closing the eyes were above the eyes, on the eyebrows, and from there they pulled the eyelids up and down, as they pleased, using very thin threads, similar to strings ofand spider web. Here too there were, as a rule, a “little Flechsig” and a “little Von W.”, and next to these also a “homunculus” that had come from the soul, still existing at the time, of Daniel Fürchtegott Flechsig. When I sometimes did not want to allow this raising and lowering of my eyelids and reacted against it, this attitude provoked the indignation of the “homunculi”, and then I was greeted with the expression “whore”; when I sometimes tried to wipe them from my eyes with a sponge, this was considered by the rays as a kind of crime against the miraculous power of God. In fact, this cleaning had a merely temporary result, as the “homunculi” were always put back together. Other “homunculi” at that time almost always gathered in large numbers on my body.
Since I began to play chess and the piano again, these have been my two main activities in the sanat…
Since I began to play chess and the piano again, these have been my two main activities in the sanatorium during the entire five years that have elapsed since then. Playing the piano, in particular, was invaluable to me, and still is to this day; I must say that I can hardly imagine how I could have borne the coercion of thinking with all its secondary phenomena during these five years if I had not been able to play the piano. As I play the piano, the frantic chatter of the voices speaking to me is muffled — along with physical exercise, this is one of the most appropriate forms of the so-called thinking of not thinking about anything, which they wanted to deprive me of, deceiving me. , pretending that it was the musical thought of not thinking about anything, as they say in the language of souls
Conviction that the Order of the World imperiously demanded that I be emasculated, whether it please…
Conviction that the Order of the World imperiously demanded that I be emasculated, whether it pleased me personally or not, and therefore, for rational reasons, there was nothing left for me but to reconcile myself to the idea of being transformed into a woman.
One of the phrases repeated countless times since then, with each manifestation of the soul’s voluptuousness, said: “Are you not ashamed before your wife?”, or, in an even more vulgar way: “Here is a president of the Court of Appeal who allows himself to be f…”. But, however revolting these voices were even to me, and however frequent the opportunities were to express my righteous indignation in some way, in the thousands of times these locutions were repeated, in time I no longer allowed myself to be confused. in behavior, which from then on I recognized as necessary and healthy for all parties: for me and for the rays.
I would like to see what man, having to choose between becoming a manly-looking idiot or a woman end…
I would like to see what man, having to choose between becoming a manly-looking idiot or a woman endowed with spirit, would not prefer the latter alternative. But it is in this way and only in this way thatthe question arises for me. The exercise of my former profession, to which I had devoted myself with all my soul, any other aim of masculine ambition, any other valorization of my intellectual energy in the service of humanity, now, given the course that things had taken, all this had been taken from me;
Other expressionsThe lower god’s messages were partly addressed to me, partly—in a way spoken throug…
Other expressionsThe lower god’s messages were partly addressed to me, partly—in a way spoken through my head—addressed to his colleague, the higher god; of the former kind was, for example, the expression already recalled: “Do not forget that you are bound up with the conception of souls”; of the latter, for example, the sentences: “Do not forget that every representation is absurd,” or “Do not forget that the end of the world is a contradiction in itself,” “Now you have made the atmospheric conditions dependent on the thought of a single man,” or “Now you have made every sacred activity impossible” (that is, through the various miracles that made it difficult to play the piano, play chess, etc.).
In a few cases, very rare indeed, it was even possible to admit a kind of confession of one’s own gu…
In a few cases, very rare indeed, it was even possible to admit a kind of confession of one’s own guilt, for example: “If only I had not placed him among the men made in haste”, or “These are the consequences of the famous politics of souls”, or “Now what will become of this damned story”, or “If only this damned joke with men would stop”. From time to time, in these words, the confession was made: “We lack an attitude”, that is, the attitude that we should demonstrate towards any good man, even towards the most abject sinner, preserving the means of purification, according to the Order of the World
Brought into the world by the parents
Future of the creature, procreation
How do I maintain myself as I
A truth of experience, for analysis, is that the question of its existence is posed to the subject, …
A truth of experience, for analysis, is that the question of its existence is posed to the subject, not under the guise of the anguish that it arouses at the level of the ego, and which is only one element of its procession, but as an articulated question: “What am I in this?” , concerning his sex and its contingency in being, that is, whether he is a man or a woman, on the one hand, and on the other, the fact that he might not be, both of which combine their mystery and link him to the symbols of procreation and death. That the question of his existence floods the subject, supports him, invades him or even tears him apart completely, is what the tensions, suspensions and fantasies he encounters testify to the analyst; but it remains to be said that it is in the form of elements of the particular discourse that this question in the Other is articulated. For it is because these phenomena are ordered in the figures of this discourse that they have the fixity of symptoms, which are legible and resolve themselves when they are deciphered.
As we can see by observing that it is not because he is foreclosed from the penis, but because he ha…
As we can see by observing that it is not because he is foreclosed from the penis, but because he has to be the phallus, that the patient will be destined to become a woman. Undoubtedly, the divination of the unconscious warns the subject, from a very early age, that, in the impossibility of being the phallus that the mother lacks, the only solution left for him is to be the woman that men lack.
This is precisely the meaning of the fantasy - the relationship of which was greatly emphasized in his writing and which we cited above - of the incubation period.ion of his second illness, that is, the idea that “it would be beautiful to be a woman at the time of copulation”. This commonplace of Schreberian literature is fixed here in its place.
The self is an Other, paranoia, makes a hole, without borders, makes no sense
He is a man who lets himself be fucked. - He is a man who dresses as a woman. - Is he a man or a wom…
He is a man who lets himself be fucked. - He is a man who dresses as a woman. - Is he a man or a woman? - What is a man, what is a woman? - He is a man who uses makeup, the body, the way, the voice - - From the hole that is possible to cross - Pass from one to the other - Crossing, transforming, upsetting, overflowing
More-than-enjoyment
More-than-enjoyment: exchange, experiencing feminine enjoyment, is not allowed in external reality, it withdraws to internal reality, direct relationship with the Other.
Schreber’s mistake: it is to place oneself in this position only for God
Theory of Knowledge
Man, woman, motherhood, virility, understandingVoluptuousness and BeatitudeGod and Immortality: future, Abandoned, Immobility as a religious obligationFree will, Knowledge, MockeryBody, No borders, rot, Cursing, coercion to think, in the openThoughts, senses, matterNo sense, what makes a hole, what destabilizes, inconsistency, malaise that invades, no borders, collapseSubject appears between signifiersPresence-absence
God and Immortality: Ahriman and Ormuzd
Personal experiences, emasculation, generating children, transformation of the genitalia
Abandoned
it must be really good to be a woman submitting to intercourse
Beatitude, nerves of feminine voluptuousness
Leaving me alone, emasculation, abandonment, murder, destruction of understanding
Demand of the voices
Transcript of thoughts Mockery, voluptuous debauchery, sexual abuse Cursed voices, Religious obligation, God’s ill willMission: to have to solve one of the most difficult tasks ever proposed to a human being and to have to carry out a sacred combat for the supreme goods of humanityRotting aliveNot thinking about anythingGuilt, we lack an attitude
