Memoirs of My Nervous Illness
London: W.H. Dawson, 1955. First U.K. Edition. Octavo. 22cm. Publisher's heavy black buckram ruled in blind to boards and titled in gilt to spine. 416pp. A little marking or spotting to the heavy waxed cloth, minor bumping to the spine ends; internally clean, ink ownership to front flyleaf. A very good copy indeed.
In 1884, a highly respected German member of the legal profession named Daniel Schreber suffered what would now be called a crisis of mental health, which resulted in total collapse and the need to be admitted to a mental hospital. The rest of Schreber's life was spent in and out of mental institutions both voluntarily and otherwise, and his memoirs of his period as a mental health patient in early 20th century Germany are detailed, illuminating, disturbing and tragic by turns. The root of Schreber's illness was the belief that God had shown him the secrets of the universe, including the fact that most other humans were merely wandering phantasms living out their shadowy lives, and it was now his job to restore humanity to a state of grace using the knowledge that he had received. This could be considered a relatively "straightforward" exhibition of religious mania and delusion, except for the additional detail that Schreber must transform himself into a woman through sheer force of will, in order to save the world. Schreber's opinion of his own illness (at times) was that in many cases it constituted a simple alternative religious belief, and that he was no more mad than someone who believed in a radically different spiritual pantheon.
Essentially this renders "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" a series of coherent and considered reports from the unknown territory beyond the borderlands of a profound mental crisis, and makes it fairly unique in a pantheon of dryly observational pieces written by psychiatrists and doctors attempting to make order out of the chaos they are observing.
In this case Schreber lays bare the underlying structure of his delusions in a way that nobody other than the suffering patient could achieve. The title is considered a key text not only for students of mental health care, but anyone seeking to untangle the tortuous social processes that impede our understanding of 'madness.'.
Price: $350.00