| Abstract: | The Schreber case has been used by generations of psychoanalysts and psychiatrists to exemplify many features of the psychoanalytic conception of psychosis. It has generally been considered the origin of a great debate in psychoanalysis as to whether schizophrenia is a disorder of nature or of nurture. I seek in this contribution to proffer a newer theory of psychopathology, one which is based upon the conception of primary and secondary disorders of attachment (bonding) and which presents itself clinically as disorders of self-regulation and of interactional regulation. I attempt to explicate this theory in the Schreber case by demonstrating that his symptoms revealed: (a) failures of normal mental state regulations, (b) the emergence of symptoms which then secondarily and pathologically restore regulation in a pathological manner, and finally (c) his/her very symptoms seem to regulate a state in the family system and/or in the system of the culture at large. |
