This book investigates what was distinctive about the predisposition to psychosis Freud posited in Daniel Paul Schreber, a presiding judge in Saxony's highest court. It argues that Freud's 1911 Schreber text reversed the order of priority in late nineteenth-century conceptions of the disposing causes of psychosis - the objective-biological and subjective-biographical - to privilege subjective disposition to psychosis, but without returning to the paradigms of early nineteenth-century Romantic psychiatry and without obviating the legitimate claims of biological psychiatry in relation to hereditary disposition. While Schreber is the book's reference point, this is not a general treatment of Schreber, or of Freud's reading of the Schreber case. It focuses rather on what was new in Freud's thinking on the disposition to psychosis, what he learned from his psychiatrist contemporaries and what he did not, and whether or not psychoanalysts have fully received his aetiology.

About the Author
Thomas G. Dalzell is Editor of 'The Letter: Irish Journal for Lacanian Psychoanalysis'. An analyst member of L'Association Lacanienne Internationale (Paris), and a member of the Irish School for Lacanian Psychoanalysis, he practises psychoanalysis in Dublin. He teaches at All Hallows, Dublin City University, and at the School of Psychotherapy, St Vincent's University Hospital, in Dublin.

Reviews
'Thomas Dalzell studies with precision the position of the best of classical psychiatry, as well as that of Freud and finally of Lacan. At the same time he does homage to a remarkable opus which was the object of these labours, that of a madman who, in his delirium and suffering, had enough humanism to leave to the savants a unique document made for their enlightenment.'- Dr Charles Melman, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist, director of teaching in Lacan's Ecole freudienne de Paris, and founder of L'Association Lacanienne Internationale, from the Preface'This work is novel, original, and exciting. Dr Dalzell's writing presents a balanced, eclectic, and logical exposition. It makes a unique contribution to the field of psychoanalytic research and is to be commended to all students intent on research in this field.'- Professor Kevin M. Malone, MD, FRCPI, FRCPsych, professor of psychiatry, School of Medicine and Medical Science, University College Dublin'In a remarkable work that joins scientific rigour to the art of the story teller, Thomas Dalzell tells the tale of the missed encounter between Freud's discovery of the crucial place of the speaking subject in the understanding of psychosis and the biological objectifications of the makers of modern psychiatry, which still dominate current theory and treatment.'- Dr Cormac Gallagher, Lacanian psychoanalyst and founder of the School of Psychotherapy at St Vincent's University Hospital, Dublin



Book Information
ISBN 9781855758834
Author Thomas Dalzell
Format Paperback
Page Count 422
Imprint Karnac Books
Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd