Memoirs of My Nervous Illness; Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by Ida Macalpine, M.D. and Richard A. Hunter, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M.

Schreber, Daniel Paul

Published by Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd, London, 1955

About this Item

8vo, 416pp; black cloth stamped in gilt and blind. The first English-language edition of Schreber's Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken, originally published in 1903, a foundational text in the literature of paranoia. Schreber experienced a psychotic break upon being named to a high position as chief judge of the Saxon Supreme Court. Emerging from institutional treatment after seven years, he undertook to record the details of his experience in this memoir. Freud's analysis of Schreber's memoir (1911) became the basis for the psychoanalytic understanding of paranoia. Elias Canetti devoted the last two chapters of his Crowds and Power to his own study of the case, finding in Schreber's delusional fantasies a key to understanding the foundation of modern fascism, an analysis further developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. An uncommon book, especially so in dust jacket. Light spatter mark to foredge; a fine, bright copy in a slightly marked dust jacket with some scattered foxing, spine sunned a shade.

Seller Inventory # 206323

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Memoirs of My Nervous Illness; Translated, Edited, with Introduction, Notes and Discussion by Ida Macalpine, M.D. and Richard A. Hunter, M.D., M.R.C.P., D.P.M.
• Publisher: Wm Dawson & Sons Ltd, London
• Publication Date: 1955
• Edition: First Edition.