Here are the memoirs of the life of Daniel Paul Schreber. In his time, he was regarded as a brilliant legal mind with a promising career. In 1884, at the age of 42, Schreber had a minor nervous breakdown after a failed election campaign. This was not unexpected for a man with stress and long exposure in the public eye, so he took a year-long vacation. In 1893, after being appointed to the highest legal position in the state of Saxony, he had yet another nervous breakdown, and was placed under tu [...]

Se volete sapere cosa passa e succede nella testa di uno psicotico dovete leggere questo libro perché ve lo descrive minuziosamente.- Schizofrenia paranoide- dispercezioni corporeee- delirio mistico- allucinazioni visive e uditive, tattili e gustative e olfattive- delirio paranoide e di persecuzione tutto strutturato magnificamente e scritto in maniera chiara e concisa da una persona estremamente intelligente e con un'ottima cultura classica e non solo.Notevole, da usare come libro di testo per [...]

this book is pretty good if you have an interest in severe mental illness. it's a personal account of years spent in a mental institution. a more legit review from brainwashed is below:In 1893, after having served as a judge, he fell ill at the age of 51. Diagnosed as a paranoiac, he spent the next seven years in an asylum, early on mute before the assaults of his hallucinations and only gradually returning to speech with revelations of his bizarre and overwhelming religious experiences. Memoirs [...]

Okay, it's weird that I reread this book in bed. It's on my nightstand book shelf. It's a huge chunk of eerily sensible ramblings by a man confined to an insane asylum in nineteenth century german, studied by Freud: the book that launched a thousand psychoanalysts into Eames chairs. I was drawn to it because I have a compulsive interest in the history of medicine and the history of insanity. I was fed too much Foucault and Zoloft as a child. I read it in bed because, for its size, it's immensely [...]

In 1975, having just been elected leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher interrupted a fellow party member who was speaking on the virtues of a "middle way" for the Tories. Mrs. Thatcher pulled a book from her briefcase and slammed it on the table. “This is what we believe,” she declared.The book, Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, is a treatise on the perils socialism poses to both prosperity and freedom. It formed the ideological fulcrum of her time in power, a reaction [...]

Wow, this one took a little longer than I anticipated. Memoirs is simultaneously one of the most amazing books I've ever read and one of the most grueling feats of mental fortitude I've ever subjected myself to. To read a first-person account of a prominent man's fall into schizophrenia and ensuing lifestyle is spellbinding, but to do so in a translation of German written in an archaic 1900-ish style is mind-numbing. This book, for the curious individual, is equal parts enlightenment and torture [...]

I've had a much more up-close-and-personal look at schizophrenia than a lot of people, and hearing Herr Schreber-- a man who tried to organize all of his psychotic experiences into a coherent theological and philosophical system-- explain his experiences this icily has a dual effect. On the one hand, I certainly don't feel like I understand his condition much better, and while the connections he makes are rather interesting, a lot of the "miracles" he describes are a little like hearing someone [...]

Chilling esp. the scene in the yard where he sees a 100 ghosts hovering around trying to slit his throat!

Too schizophrenically and religiously insane to persevere with - sad to read a great intellect wrestling with its own insanity and trying to make sense of it all.

Great book about what it's actually like to go crazy!I love this book. Essential if you have ever experienced anything like this, neurotic, psychotic, or otherwise. Check out the book by Kurt Vonnegut's son too along the same lines. Eden Express? Can't think of any others like this offhand.Although at the time people Mark Vonnegut had schizophrenia, his illness looks like some sort of manic psychosis as part of a psychotic bipolar disorder. Much of what was formerly schizophrenia has gone over t [...]

This is pretty much unreadable, although I surprised myself by making it through 170 pages before finally giving up. There is a certain depressing fascination about it. For example, take an incident where Schreber has a "Divine Vision" in the garden of his asylum, whilst accompanied by an attendant. To his surprise, the attendant does not register that anything out of the ordinary has occurred. Now Schreber is intelligent enough to realise that this means one of two things: (A) the experience he [...]

Interesting to see a logical/ judicial mind dealing with it's own insanity, however, not a great read, like hearing about other peoples dreams.

Schreber was right.

"only a narrow strip of land"

No hay otra manera de definirlo: Memorias de un enfermo de nervios es un libro que posee la extraña cualidad de arrinconar al lector hacia un estado de estupor constante, en el que es capaz de presenciar, no sin un inconfesable escalofrío de inquietud, una batalla de dimensiones cósmicas que llevará a la salvación y purificación del mundo, y sólo muy tarde se percata de que asiste a la pirotecnia egocéntrica de un demente, a los delirios de un paranoico, no digamos ya de grandeza, sino d [...]

Schreber is one of the biggest personalities of the psychoanalytical world, he was analyzed by their founder, Freud, and his biggest follower, Lacan, but unfortunately, they never met him. Their source material was Schreber memories, that he wrote with the intention of enlighting the world of what he learned from his conversations with God. It's not an easy book to read, it's clearly written by a perturbed mind and that's what makes this book so hard to read.

Les Mémoires d'un névropathe de Daniel Paul Schreber se méritent seulement deux étoiles sur cinq du fait de la médiocrité de leur qualité littéraire. Ce texte est « le produit d'une imagination maladive, et il n'échappera pas un seul instant à quiconque en fera la lecture que l'auteur a l'esprit dérangé ». (Mémoires, p. 533) C'est précisément cela qui rend sa lecture pénible. Pour en résumer rapidement le propos, l'auteur se croit investi d'une relation privilégiée à Dieu, [...]

This is an astounding document. A schizophrenic man writes in detail about the events that have happened to him since he first became mentally ill. The author appears to have a great deal of attachment to a self-conception of himself as a rational, intelligent, eloquent thinker, and makes every effort to convince the reader that despite his illness, this is still the case. He constantly fails in the most tragic way - it is obvious to the reader that while the author is making a truly heroic effo [...]

Daniel Paul Schreber's "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" is pretty fascinating. It is by no means an easy read, but I found it worthwhile and interesting.Schreber, a well-respected judge, had a nervous breakdown, which has all the hallmarks of schizophrenia. "Memoirs" follows his time in the asylum and he vividly describes his hallucinations and delusions. He believes God talks to him and "nerves" or souls continually enter his body in an attempt to turn him into a woman. He is clearly logical and [...]

Written by the world's most sensible psychotic, Dr Schreber describes his own powerful place within an infinitely complex cosmic hierarchy of malevolent deities. In this account, God oversees a world of corpses showered with remnants of souls ("rays"). As Schreber's nervous illness exacerbates, his body's magnetic force increases, thus rendering him vulnerable to painful experiments, mind control, and possession by various rays - including but not limited to his doctors, a troupe of 400 young me [...]

I was fascinated by this for about the first twenty pages but was under the false impression that it would develop and become more conventional. However it is a book written by a man suffering from delusions about the world and his own place in it. The fact that someone can write in a comprehensible manner whilst expressing such bizarre delusions is instructional but not very entertaining. I felt sorry that he was unable to gain any real remedy from the institutions that he was committed to. Biz [...]

This is a haunting, first-hand account of the experiences of a man torn between two realities: the one he experiences, and the one experienced by everyone else. For those of us who sometimes dream vividly enough to forget which of our experiences belong to us alone and which are shared with others, it is an indispensable reminder of the humanity which is preserved beneath the surface of insanity and the insanity which lies somewhere in us all. For those who feel firmly grounded in reality, well. [...]

Sehr sehr anstrengend zu lesen. So viele Wiederholungen in einem Buch habe ich seltenst gelesen.Aber ansonsten interessante Gottes-/Jenseitsansichten eines Nervenkranken. Im Anhang wird es eigentlich erst spannend, man kann sowohl das Empfinden des Nervenkranken nachlesen wie auch die Perspektive des Arztes auf dieses. Schließlich noch einige Akten, die zur Entlassung des Kranken führten. Denn wer mag schon zu beurteilen, ab wann ein Geisteskranker für sich oder andere zur Gefahr wird und ob [...]

This was interesting diary of a man who struggled with mental illness in the 19th century (schizophrenia and gender identity disorder). Considered the first true self-documentation of delusional schizophrenia, its a moving narrative that looks at the impact that mental illness had on family and the system in which mental illness was handled. This, I think, is a great compliment to Foucault's Madness and Civilization.

I am reading this for the third time. Radically certain of his delusions, Schreber writes his story and quite aptly develops his theory of a "nerve language."Amazing stuff. For added entertainment, read all the nonsense written about the book in the .Com reviews section. Classic Comedy.

Fascinating journey into the mind of Dr. Schreber. Provides enlightenment on what it means to be mentally ill and leads the reader to an interesting metaphysical realm that was reality for Dr. Schreber. The level of detail and obvious intelligence of the author leads one to reconsider the difference between being mentally impaired and being healthy.

A fascinating trip into the mind of a man logically interpreting what, to him, are sensations as real as anything perceived by a sane person. Rather than label him insane for believing his hallucinations to be based in reality, I came away believing that anyone perceiving such powerful phenomena would be mad to ignore them.

the divine nerve language is telling me to finish this laterthe divine twitch nerve language is telling me to read more of this or i will become a woman

essential modernist reading. much funnier than Joyce.

incredible.