[Doctor and patient: Paul Flechsig and Daniel Paul Schreber].
During his three stays in psychiatric institutions between 1884 and 1911, Daniel Paul Schreber was also twice treated in the psychiatric and neurological hospital of Leipzig University headed by Paul Flechsig. In his "Memoirs of a Nervous Patient," Schreber also described the treatment he had received there, which in his perception seemed to be of crucial importance for his later fate. Research on the Schreber case in the last 25 years, based mainly on the interpretation of his own memoirs, supported the view that in fact Flechsig was to blame to a great extent for the outbreak of Schreber's paranoid schizophrenia in February 1894. This paper aims at forwarding exonerating arguments in favor of Flechsig, concluding that what he did did not differ distinctively from the standard tenets of organic psychiatry taught at that time. Of course this does not change the fact that Schreber did not receive the right kind of treatment. However, it puts Flechsig's approach into the right perspective.
Steinberg
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Archiv für Leipziger Psychiatriegeschichte, Klinik und Poliklinik für Psychiatrie, Universität Leipzig. steinbh@medizin.uni-leipzig.de
Carius
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D
D005858:Germany; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric / Q000266:history*; D006785:Hospitals, University / Q000266:history*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008374:Manuscripts, Medical as Topic / Q000266:history*; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000266:history*; D011572:Psychoanalysis / Q000266:history*; D012563:Schizophrenia, Paranoid / Q000266:history*