ABSTRACT
As has been true for many of the other cases I have analysed in this book, to a certain degree Freud’s (1911c) “Psycho-analytic note on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia” provides us with a relatively limited amount of information about the life of the person he subjects to analysis, specifically with reference to his family. Furthermore, and similar in a way to the analysis that Freud provides in his an “Analysis of a phobia in a five-year-old boy”, his “Psycho-analytic note on an autobiographical account of a case of paranoia” is also limited by the fact that he did not work personally with the person he subjects to analysis. Instead, his analysis is based on the personal memoirs of Daniel Paul Schreber, a German judge who was twice hospitalised due to psychosis. Yet despite this relative lack of information about Schreber’s family, the second-hand nature of the information available (provided by Schreber himself), and the complex nature of the information available in the memoirs (which primarily focuses on the extensive and complex delusions that Schreber experienced), in this chapter I will argue that there is nonetheless something useful to be made of
