Barbelith Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing

'Memoirs of my nervous illness' by Daniel Paul Shreber.

First read this book about a year ago and i've recently gone back to it. It's stunning. Shreber was a Judge in Germany in the late 1800s who had a 'breakdown' and wrote his memoirs in an asylum during his more lucid moments. It's similer to Philip K Dicks' Exegesis in that it descibes in detail a very personal and troubled view of the universe . The world he descibes is ruled over by a very gnostic predatary god presiding over the only living soul (Shreber) tangled up in a complex system of 'black nerves'. Everyone else is reduced to phantasms or 'fleeting improvised men'. The only way that Shreber thinks the universe can be saved is by his undergoing transformation, becoming female and giving birth to humanity. As Shreber puts it 'God has no interest in mankind because to God the world is populated by corpses'.
Apparently it is (or was)a well used book in Psychology etc and Freud, Jung wrote much about it so i'm sure a few of you (Ganesh etc) have read it.
Any thoughts..?