SOURCE: Crapanzano, Vincent. “‘Lacking Now Is Only The Leading Idea, That is—We, The Rays, Have No Thoughts’: Interlocutory Collapse in Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness.” Critical Inquiry 24 (spring 1998): 737-65.

In the following essay, Crapanzano relates Schreber's delusions to descriptions of spirit possession and discusses Schreber's inability to interact with or relate to other people.

Le romancier n'aura qu'à distribuer logiquement les faits.

—Émile Zola, “Du Roman”

Die Geburtskammer des Romans ist das Individuum in seiner Einsamkeit.

—Walter Benjamin, “Der Erzähler”

With the publication in 1903 of his Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, later translated as Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, the Dresden Senatspräsident Daniel Paul Schreber, the son of the famed educator, social reformer, and physical education enthusiast, Daniel Gottlieb Moritz Schreber, was to become the most cited patient in the history of psychiatry.¹ Memoirs of My Nervous Illness² caused a sensation that challenged...