The Schreber Case

Freud rarely treated psychotic patients or, indeed psychoanalyzed people from their writings, but he had a powerful and imaginative understanding of their condition - revealed, most notably, in this analysis of a remarkable memoir. In 1903, Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, a highly intelligent and cultured man, produced a vivid account of a nervous illness dominated by the desire to become a woman, terrifying delusions about his doctor and a belief in his own special relationship with God. Eight years later, Freud's penetrating insight uncovered the unacceptable impulses and feelings Schreber had about his father, which underlay his extravagant symptoms. Yet he also demonstrated the link with more normal patterns of psychosexual development - and the human tendency to transform love into hate.