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a posture-improving appliance, the straight-holder. This ludicrous per–
ception, maintains Lothane, "is due to the horrific imagery created by the
exaggerated descriptions of these allegedly immobilizing and pain-produc–
ing appliances by Niederland, and the even greater distortions
by
Schatzman." These beliefs, he continues, were fostered by the interpreta–
tion of certain hallucinations and delusions Paul Schreber experienced at
the Sonnenstein clinic during his second hospitalization, rather than
by
mistreatment at the hands of his father. Would someone who advocated
that infants not be swaddled, that they be kept
completely free from restraints,
really act totally against his preachings when it came to his own infant?
Lothane discovered that restraining gadgets were prescribed only for older
children for limited periods, to improve their posture and avoid nagging
them; and that Freudians have unthinkingly accepted the exaggerated and
wrong interpretations of pathological and homosexual components in
both the father's and the son's personalities because they have set out to
reaffirm Freud's sexual theories.
Lothane sets forth convincingly the thesis that all elaborations of the
Schreber case underplay or even ignore the power of directors of mental
institutions, and of family members. Paul Schreber's first psychiatrist in
the
Nervenanstalt
was Paul Fleschig, whom he referred to in the
Memoirs
as
"God Fleschig." Lothane describes in great detail Fleschig's background
and training, his clinic and the pride he took in it, as well as how closely
his personality, and his professional experience and beliefs, resembled
those of Schreber's father. But Fleschig was an organicist, totally unin–
terested in treating mental disorders by psychological means, even though
he was sensitive to forensic issues. He assumed, for example, that the anti–
dote to morbid excitation of the brain, the "heat of drives and feelings,"
is
found in mental-spiritual thought centers, and judged "anatomical predis–
positions" by measuring the size and form of the brain. Yet he was aware
that a diagnosis of psychosis could have Schreber declared incompetent
and thus deprive him of his civil rights. He was allied also with Schreber's
wife Sabine, who trusted him and whom he treated. Only during the sec–
ond confinement did he side with her and banish Schreber to
Sonnenstein, to institutional psychiatric treatment in a state hospital.
Paul Schreber depicted his next psychiatrist, Guido Weber, who had
written on pathologies of the brain, as the " 'God' who dealt with
corpses." According to Lothane, Weber would have wanted to preside
over a clinic like Fleschig's, but Sonnenstein was being flooded with
chronic patients, so that Weber was caught between wanting to send
them to custodial institutions and holding on to the less troubled patients.
Schreber fell between the cracks: his habits of bellowing, and of declaring
himself to be a woman, worked against his timely release, and Weber
