My Own Private Germany

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Daniel Paul Schreber's experience in a Leipzig psychiatric clinic in 1893 led to his influential work, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, detailing his struggles with delusion, persecution, and sexual ecstasy. His memoirs, later analyzed by Freud, became a key psychiatric text on paranoia. Eric Santner's interpretation positions Schreber's writings as a "nerve bible" reflecting the anxieties of the fin-de-siècle era, foreshadowing the ideologies that would emerge in the wake of war, revolution, and the collapse of empires.