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that the images and sensations in Paul Schreber's psychosis were deriva–
tives of the way his father, Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, M .D., tor–
tured his son by means of posture-improving orthopedic appliances and
other educational methods." This view was enshrined after Morton
Schatzman, another psychiatrist, more or less transformed Niederman's
premises into a best-selling book,
Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family
(1973), which assured Schreber a unique place in the (currently popular)
literature on victimization. If Lothane could disprove the roots of
Niederland's and Schatzman's assumptions then he would weaken clinical
theories, mostly involved with ego psychology, that center on the influ–
ence of early childhood trauma on adult psychopathology. He set out to
do so by tracing the minute ups and downs ofSchreber's illness during his
confinement, and compared these to the relations he had with his care–
takers - psychiatrists and family members.
Lothane tells us that he began to doubt Freud's diagnoses of Paul
Schreber as paranoid and homosexual - as well as the depictions of
Schreber's father as a sadist and child abuser - after coming across
Schreber's
Memoirs.
Curiosity led Lothane to unearth existing bibliogra–
phies, letters and archives, to interview Schreber's surviving relatives, and
especially
to
explore the interactions Schreber had with his psychiatrists,
along with the latters' own scientific biases. In the process, Lothane not
only speculated about Schreber's relationship to his psychiatrists and to his
wife Sabine and mother Pauline -
all
of whom have been neglected in the
psychoanalytic literature - but provided a partial, yet excellent, social
history of psychiatry during the nineteenth century.
Contrary to accepted lore, Lothane ascertained and documented that
Schreber's father had been a respected physician as well as an influential
and enlightened educator. Following in the footsteps of, among others,
Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836), Moritz Schreber advocated
macrobiotics based on disease prevention through diet, daily exercise,
sexual hygiene along with moderation (even in marriage), and good moral
habits that start in childhood; and he wrote about these topics for the
public throughout his life. He also preached that strength is based on love,
that children be treated with kindness, benevolence and forgiveness, and
ascribed mental illness to moral lapses - to succumbing to passions, vice
and unreason. In the introduction to his most influential book,
Kallipadie
(1858), Moritz Schreber stressed the importance of physiology and psy–
chology, and "developing in the child good and right habits, [to] prepare
it to pursue good and right later in life, with awareness and free will." All
in
all,
Moritz Schreber emerges as a forerunner of progressive education,
as the exact opposite of what was assumed about him in the psychoana–
lytic literature: a man who traumatized his infant son by shackling him to
