Morton Schatzman

"Schreber was labelled insane, and would be today. What of his father?", 17 April 2016

This review is from: Soul murder: persecution in the family (Hardcover)
A most interesting look at Daniel Paul Schreber (1842-1911), a highly intelligent German schizophrenic who documented his 'illness' minutely. While psychologists usually focus on the patient alone, Schatzman turns to look at his childhood.
Son of an eminent pedagogue , his father's numerous works on bringing up children (although highly esteemed at the time) are quite horrifying to the modern reader. From various contraptions to force the child to stand or sleep in a 'correct' position to compelling his offspring from earliest infancy to subjugate his every whim to that which was deemed permissible by his parent.
And yet - and this is the crux of the matter - the child was not to go off and brood dark, vengeful thoughts against the parent: "Any 'spite', 'bitterness' or 'anger' the child feels towards his punisher must be repressed."
I'm not a psychologist and found some paragraphs rather hard to grasp (but it's a shortish book and generally quite readable) but it was immensely interesting to see how the patient blamed God for the persecutions he felt he suffered, instead of his father. Also to see Schatzman's conclusion that his father's works had an impact on Nazi thinking later on.
It's mystifying that Schreber senior's works had such import when not only did one son go mad, but the other committed suicide.… (més)

Imagine what it would be like if the most imminent child-rearing specialist in the country used a system that was akin to torture to completely dominate the child and you were his son. This is the story of Daniel Paul Schreber, who went mad and wrote a memoir of his madness. Many psychologists, including Freud, analyzed his paranoia based on his memoir. The problem, according to author Morton Schatzman, is that no one bothered to look into how Schreber's own father's renowned child-rearing methods were to blame for his madness. A very scary and interesting story.… (més)