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Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (Paperback, Main)
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Memoirs of My Nervous Illness (Paperback, Main)
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List price R644
Loot Price R587
Discovery Miles 5 870
You Save R57 (9%)
Expected to ship within 10 - 15 working days
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Novelist Antonia White wrote of her time in Bethlem asylum in the
1920s that 'It was as if she was both in the belly of the beast and
also detached, observing the process of her madness...' But for a
chilling, blow-by-blow account of what it is really like to be
mentally ill and to be able to record it in minute detail, nothing
has yet surpassed Shreber's Memoirs, first published in 1903.
Shreber was born in 1842, became a judge, had his first nervous
breakdown at 42 and subsequently returned to hospital at 51 for
another nine years. His delusionary world called upon him to bring
back to mankind the lost state of blessedness. In pursuit of this
mission, he reveals an increadible structure of Gods, nerve
language, 'rays', souls and soul murder. He is compelled to think
incessantly, which results in his endlessly repeating the same
phrases, bellowing loudly and grimacing. At the same time, he is
able to write insightful and logical letters to his wife,
suggesting a capability to retain slivers of sanity within madness.
When does belief cross over into religious mania and madness?
Schreber wanted to publish his memoirs both as a plea for his
release and to raise doubts about whether his delusional system had
a basis in truth. Had he really been granted a glance behind the
veil of rationality? One of the most fascinating exercises is for
the reader to try to relate the phantasmagorical experiences
Schreber describes, to the more prosaic medical experts' reports
covering exactly the same circumstances in the Addenda. (Kirkus UK)
In 1884, the distinguished German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber
suffered the first of a series of mental collapses that would
afflict him for the rest of his life. In his madness, the world was
revealed to him as an enormous architecture of nerves, dominated by
a predatory God. It became clear to Schreber that his personal
crisis was implicated in what he called a "crisis in God's realm,"
one that had transformed the rest of humanity into a race of
fantasms. There was only one remedy; as his doctor noted: Schreber
"considered himself chosen to redeem the world, and to restore to
it the lost state of Blessedness. This, however, he could only do
by first being transformed from a man into a woman...."
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