Freud - Complete Works (407 page)

   (
b
) The attitude of our
patient towards
God
is so singular and so full of internal
contradictions that it requires more than a little faith to persist
in the belief that there is nevertheless ‘method’ in
his ‘madness’. With the help of what Dr. Schreber tells
us in the
Denkwürdigkeiten
, we must now endeavour to
arrive at a more exact view of his theologico-psychological system,
and we must expound his opinions concerning
nerves, the state of
bliss, the divine hierarchy
, and
the attributes of God
,
in their manifest (delusional) nexus. At every point in his theory
we shall be struck by the astonishing mixture of the commonplace
and the clever, of what has been borrowed and what is original.

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2398

   The human soul is comprised in
the
nerves
of the body. These are to be conceived of as
structures of extraordinary fineness, comparable to the finest
thread. Some of these nerves are suited only for the reception of
sense-perceptions, while others (
the nerves of
understanding
) carry out all the functions of the mind; and in
this connection it is to be noticed that
each single nerve of
understanding represents a person’s entire mental
individuality
, and that the presence of a greater or lesser
number of nerves of understanding has no influence except upon the
length of time during which the mind can retain its
impressions.¹

   Whereas men consist of bodies and
nerves, God is from His very nature nothing but nerve. But the
nerves of God are not, as is the case with human bodies, present in
limited numbers, but are infinite or eternal. They possess all the
properties of human nerves to an enormously intensified degree. In
their creative capacity - that is, their power of turning
themselves into every imaginable object in the created world - they
are known as
rays
. There is an intimate relation between God
and the starry heaven and the sun.²

  
¹
The words in which Schreber states this
theory are italicized by him, and he adds a footnote, in which he
insists that it can be used as an explanation of heredity:
‘The male semen’, he declares, ‘contains a nerve
belonging to the father, and it unites with a nerve taken from the
mother’s body to form a new entity.’ (7.) Here,
therefore, we find a quality properly belonging to the spermatozoon
transferred on to the nerves, which makes it probable that
Schreber’s ‘nerves’ are derived from the sphere
of ideas connected with sexuality. It not infrequently happens in
the
Denkwürdigkeiten
that an incidental note upon some
piece of delusional theory gives us the desired indication of the
genesis of the delusion and so of its meaning.

  
²
In this connection see my discussion below
on the significance of the sun. - The comparison between (or rather
the condensation of) nerves and rays may well have been based on
the linear extension which they have in common. The ray-nerves, by
the way, are no less creative than the
spermatozoon-nerves.

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2399

   When the work of creation was
finished, God withdrew to an immense distance (10-11 and 252) and,
in general, resigned the world to its own laws. He limited His
activities to drawing up to Himself the souls of the dead. It was
only in exceptional instances that He would enter into relations
with particular, highly gifted persons,¹ or would intervene by
means of a miracle in the destinies of the world. God does not have
any regular communication with human souls, in accordance with the
Order of Things, till after death.² When a man dies, his
spiritual parts (that is, his nerves) undergo a process of
purification before being finally reunited with God Himself as
‘fore-courts of Heaven’. Thus it comes about that
everything moves in an eternal round, which lies at the basis of
the Order of Things. In creating anything, God is parting with a
portion of Himself, or is giving a portion of His nerves a
different shape. The apparent loss which He thus sustains is made
good when, after hundreds and thousands of years, the nerves of
dead men, that have entered the state of bliss, once more accrue to
Him as ‘fore-courts of Heaven’ (18 and 19
n
.).

   Souls that have passed through
the process of purification enter into the enjoyment of a
state
of bliss
.³ In the meantime they have lost some of their
individual consciousness, and have become fused together with other
souls into higher unities. Important souls, such as those of men
like Goethe, Bismarck, etc., may have to retain their sense of
identity for hundreds of years to come, before they too can become
resolved into higher soul-complexes, such as ‘Jehovah
rays’ in the case of ancient Jewry: or ‘Zoroaster
rays’ in the case of ancient Persia. In the course of their
purification ‘souls learn the language which is spoken by God
himself, the so-called "basic language", a vigorous
though somewhat antiquated German, which is especially
characterized by its great wealth of euphemisms’.
⁴
(13.)

  
¹
In the ‘basic language’ (see
below) this is described as ‘making a nerve-connection with
them’.

  
²
We shall find later that certain criticisms
against God are based on this fact.

  
³
This consists essentially in a feeling of
voluptuousness (see below).

  
⁴
On
one single occasion during his illness the patient was vouchsafed
the privilege of seeing, with his spiritual eyes, God Almighty
clear and undisguised before him. On that occasion God uttered what
was a very current word in the basic language, and a forcible
though not an amiable one - the word ‘Slut!’ (136). [In
German ‘
Luder
’. This term of abuse is
occasionally applied to males, though much more often to
females.]

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2400

   God Himself is not a simple
entity. ‘Above the "fore-courts of Heaven" hovered
God Himself, who, in contradistinction to these "anterior
realms of God", was also described as the "posterior
realms of God". The posterior realms of God were, and still
are, divided in a strange manner into two parts, so that a lower
God (Ahriman) was differentiated from an upper God (Ormuzd).’
(19.) As regards the significance of this division Schreber can
tell us no more than that the lower God was more especially
attached to the peoples of a dark race (the Semites) and the upper
God to those of a fair race (the Aryans); nor would it be
reasonable, in such sublime matters, to expect more of human
knowledge. Nevertheless, we are also told that ‘in spite of
the fact that in certain respects God Almighty forms a unity, the
lower and the upper God must be regarded as separate Beings, each
of which possesses its own particular egoism and its own particular
instinct of self-preservation,
even in relation to the
other
, and each of which is therefore constantly endeavouring
to thrust itself in front of the other’ (140
n
.).
Moreover, the two divine Beings behaved in quite different ways
towards the unlucky Schreber during the acute stage of his
illness.¹

   In the days before his illness
Senatspräsident Schreber had been a doubter in religious
matters (29 and 64); he had never been able to persuade himself
into a firm belief in the existence of a personal God. Indeed, he
adduces this fact about his earlier life as an argument in favour
of the complete reality of his delusions.² But any one who
reads the account which follows of the character-traits of
Schreber’s God will have to allow that the transformation
effected by the paranoic disorder was no very fundamental one, and
that in the Redeemer of to-day much remains of the doubter of
yesterday.

  
¹
A footnote on page 20 leads us to suppose
that a passage in Byron’s
Manfred
may have determined
Schreber’s choice of the names of Persian divinities. We
shall later come upon. further evidence of the influence of this
poem on him.

  
²
‘That it was simply a matter of
illusions seems to me to be
in my case
, from the very nature
of things, psychologically unthinkable. For illusions of holding
communication with God or with departed souls can properly only
arise in the minds of persons who, before falling into their
condition of pathological nervous excitement, already have a firm
belief in God and in the immortality of the soul.
This was not
by any means so, however, in my case, as has been explained at the
beginning of this chapter
.’ (79.)

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2401

   For there is a flaw in the Order
of Things, as a result of which the existence of God Himself seems
to be endangered. Owing to circumstances which are incapable of
further explanation, the nerves of
living
men, especially
when in a condition of
intense excitement
, may exercise such
a powerful attraction upon the nerves of God that He cannot get
free from them again, and thus His own existence may be threatened
(11). This exceedingly rare occurrence took place in
Schreber’s case and involved him in the greatest sufferings.
The instinct of self-preservation was aroused in God (30), and it
then became evident that God was far removed from the perfection
ascribed to him by religions. Through the whole of Schreber’s
book there runs the bitter complaint that God, being only
accustomed to communication with the dead,
does not understand
living men
.

   ‘In this connection,
however, a
fundamental misunderstanding
prevails, which has
since run through my whole life like a scarlet thread. It is based
precisely upon the fact that,
in accordance with the Order of
Things, God really knows nothing about living men
and did not
need to know; consonantly with the Order of Things, He needed only
to have communication with corpses.’ (55.) - ‘This
state of things . . . I am convinced, is once more to be brought
into connection with the fact that God was, if I may so express it,
quite incapable of dealing with living men, and was only accustomed
to communicate with corpses, or at most with men as they lay asleep
(that is, in their dreams).’ (141.) - ‘I myself feel
inclined to exclaim: "
Incredibile scriptu!
" Yet it
is all literally true, however difficult it may be for other people
to grasp the idea of God’s complete inability to judge living
men correctly, and however long I myself took to accustom myself to
this idea after my innumerable observations upon the
subject.’ (246.)

   But as a result of God’s
misunderstanding of living men it was possible for Him Himself to
become the instigator of the plot against Schreber, to take him for
an idiot, and to subject him to these severe ordeals (264). To
avoid being set down as an idiot, he submitted himself to an
extremely burdensome system of ‘enforced thinking’. For
‘every time that my intellectual activities ceased, God
jumped to the conclusion that my mental faculties were extinct and
that the destruction of my understanding (the idiocy), for which He
was hoping, had actually set in, and that a withdrawal had now
become possible’ (206).

   The behaviour of God in the
matter of the urge to evacuate (or ‘sh--’) rouses him
to a specially high pitch of indignation. The passage is so
characteristic that I will quote it in full. But to make it clear I
must first explain that both the miracles and the voices proceed
from God, that is, from the divine rays.

Psycho-Analytic Notes On An Autobiographical Account Of A Case Of Paranoia

2402

   ‘Although it will
necessitate my touching upon an unsavoury subject, I must devote a
few more words to the question that I have just quoted ("Why
don’t you sh--?") on account of the typical character of
the whole business. The need for evacuation, like all else that has
to do with my body, is evoked by a miracle. It is brought about by
my faeces being forced forwards (and sometimes backwards again) in
my intestines; and if, owing to there having already been an
evacuation, enough material is not present, then such small remains
as there may still be of the contents of my intestines are smeared
over my anal orifice. This occurrence is a miracle performed by the
upper God, and it is repeated several dozens of times at the least
every day. It is associated with an idea which is utterly
incomprehensible to human beings and can only be accounted for by
God’s complete ignorance of living man as an organism.
According to this idea "sh--ing" is in a certain sense
the final act; that is to say, when once the urge to sh-- has been
miracled up, the aim of destroying the understanding is achieved
and a final withdrawal of the rays becomes possible. To get to the
bottom of the origin of this idea, we must suppose, as it seems to
me, that there is a misapprehension in connection with the symbolic
meaning of the act of evacuation, a notion, in fact, that any one
who has been in such a relation as I have with divine rays is to
some extent entitled to sh-- upon the whole world.