ABSTRACT
Unlike his case studies of Dora, Hans, and his Rat Man patient, Ernst Lanzer, Sigmund Freud based his fourth long case study on the published account by a patient, Daniel Paul Schreber, of his mental illness. In doing so Freud variously described Schreber’s illness as dementia praecox, psychosis, or schizophrenia, now defined by the American Psychiatric Association as including delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized speech. Schreber’s delusional experiences included the belief that ‘a conspiracy’ against him ‘was brought to a head’. It was not, however, in terms of Schreber’s childlessness that Freud psychoanalyzed Schreber’s ills. Freud understood Schreber’s schizophrenia or psychosis as involving defences of repression, reversal, and projection rooted in a childhood ‘father-complex’. Developments of this understanding have informed subsequent psychoanalytic accounts of this condition. They are used to help those involved with patients with schizophrenia or psychosis to better understand what might be going on in their mind.
