The Schreber Case

by Sigmund Freud, Andrew Webber (Translator), Colin MacCabe (Introduction)

Overview

Freud rarely treated psychotic patients or psychoanalyzed people just 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 Schreber, a highly intelligent and cultured man, produced a vivid account of his 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 impulses and feelings Schreber had about his father, which underlay his extravagant symptoms.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780142437421
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/24/2003
Series:	Penguin Classics Series
Pages:	96
Product dimensions:	5.08(w) x 7.71(h) x 0.28(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was born in Moravia and lived in Vienna between the ages of four and eighty-two. In 1938 Hitler's invasion of Austria forced him to seek asylum in London, where he died the following year. Freud's career began with several years of brilliant work on the anatomy and physiology of the nervous system. He was almost thirty when, after a period of study under Charcot in Paris, his interests first turned to psychology, and another ten years of clinical work in Vienna (at first in collaboration with Breuer, an older colleague) saw the birth of his creation: psychoanalysis. This began simply as a method of treating neurotic patients by investigating their minds, but it quickly grew into an accumulation of knowledge about the workings of the mind in general, whether sick or healthy. Freud was thus able to demonstrate the normal development of the sexual instinct in childhood and, largely on the basis of an examination of dreams, arrived at his fundamental discovery of the unconscious forces that influence our everyday thoughts and actions. Freud's life was uneventful, but his ideas have shaped not only many specialist disciplines, but the whole intellectual climate of the last half-century.

Andrew Webber is a senior lecturer in the department of German at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Churchill College. He has published widely on German literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Table of Contents

The Schreber Case - Sigmund Freud Introduction
Translator's Preface

The Schreber Case (Psychoanalytic Remarks on an Autobiographically Described Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides))

[Introduction]
I. Case History
II. Attempts at Interpretation
III. On the Paranoid Mechanism
Postscript

Editorial Reviews

The "Wolfman" was among Freud's most famous cases, and here the volume gets what the publisher is calling "the first major new translation in more than 30 years." In addition to the Wolfman, so called because the patient had frequent dreams of wolves, this also contains his notes on the "Ratman," "Little Hans," and other notable patients. The Schreber Case is Freud's analysis of Judge Daniel Schreber's memoir, which determined that the subject was suffering from multiple neuroses. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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