SOURCE: Hendershot, Cyndy. “Paranoia and The Delusion of the Total System.” American Imago 54, no. 1 (spring 1997): 15-37.

In the following essay, Hendershot discusses Schreber's Memoirs in an examination of late twentieth-century cultural paranoia and its connection to such scientific advancements as nuclear weaponry.

Post-World-War-Two American society is popularly and frequently defined by the symptom of paranoia. The paranoia which pervades the McCarthyist witch hunts, the “duck and cover” policy of civil defense, and postwar representations of the alien invader characterize late twentieth century perceptions of 1950s America. Science fiction is the genre most commonly invoked now to represent 1950s paranoia and within 1950s culture it stood as a genre conducive to expressions of fear and paranoia. Los Alamos and the development of the atomic bomb gave rise to numerous cultural texts which attempted to represent what was frequently perceived as the unrepresentable—atomic power. The prehistoric monsters, giant ants...