Posts on repetitions

Fanon on the Ambivalence of Anti-Colonial Violence

hi (hji) — Sat, 18 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Chapter five of Wretched of the Earth, Colonial War and Mental Disorders,¹ is a hard read. I want to try and think through its structure.

My first instinct is to say it is structured as a clinical text, a series of case studies on – as the title indicates – mental disorders related to colonial war. But then it starts as a discussion not of colonial war but the colonial condition as a pathogenic situation. This discussion of the colonial condition more generally frames the discussion of the case studies, Fanon comes back to it at the end in the section From the North African’s Criminal Impulsiveness to the War of National Liberation². In this last section Fanon talks about said Criminal Impulsiveness, which was widely accepted in the psychiatric literature, as maladaption to the colonial condition, which anti-colonial resistance breaks through. Anti-Colonial war here becomes, in a sense, therapeutic. The pathology of the colonial situation that Fanon draws out, is one of {m|d}isplaced anger. Because the true conflict colonist/native can, by virtue of the colonial organisation of society, not be expressed, violence turns inward. “Wars of national liberation bring out the true protagonists” (p. 230) insofar the pathogenic conflict is confronted.

The case studies that make up by far the largest part of the chapter are then positioned between two sections that could function on their own as one text about the pathogenic condition that is colonialism and the curative potential of anti-colonial struggle. Positioned like this, the case studies are a break in Fanons discourse; they are concerned with anti-colonial struggle as the pathogenic condition and thus problematize any temptation to romanticize it. The break between the sections is underlined by a stylistic change: Fanons voice in the case study is much more clinical and distant than in the framing sections, compared to those the language of the case studies is almost impassive, not least because Fanon avoids direct judgement of his subjects.

If one of the elements of the curative potential of anti-colonial struggle is how it enables the emergence of native identity and subjectivity, Fanon traces quite a few of the pathologies in his algerian patients to problems in exactly that process: The kids that kill their friend as a representative of the colonizers, the ex-fighter that shatters when the absolute antagonism between him and the people he killed becomes unstable through new friendships with French people, the fighter who struggles with the connection he’s making between his own mother and a French woman he killed. These and other cases are clearly related to the specific modes of how “the true protagonists” (see above) of the conflict emerge, need to be stabilized and remain problematic, psychically and materially.

The structure of the chapter introduces an ambivalence towards anti-colonial violence which consequently is not – cannot be, as indicated by the absence of an explicit discussion of the ambivalence – disavowed but certainly problematized. The ambivalence is present not through Fanons manifest material but through the split of the chapter itself.

The ambivalence towards anti-colonial violence resonates strongly with Foucaults question “How does one keep from being fascist, even (especially) when one believes oneself to be a revolutionary militant? How do we rid our speech and our acts, our hearts and our pleasures, of fascism? How do we ferret out the fascism that is ingrained in our behavior?”, that Camille Robcis brings up in her discussion of institutional psychotherapy,³ though I’m somewhat sceptical of her reliance on Foucaults english preface to Anti-Oedipus⁴ to characterize that book and institutional psychotherapy more broadly. Specifically Foucaults notion of ’inner fascism’, that she uses quite a lot, seems to me somewhat counter to what I take to be the distinguishing characteristic of institutional psychotherapy: The focus on the precendence of the group, the sociogenesis of interiority and thus the need for antifascist institutions contra a focus on pure interiority.

Fanon, Frantz. (1961) 2004. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York (N.Y.): Grove press. ↩︎
In the older english translation by Constance Farrington (Fanon, Frantz. (1961) 2001. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Constance Farrington. Reprinted. Penguin Classics. London New York: Penguin Books.) this section is titled Criminal impulses found in North Africans which have their origin in the National War of Liberation. Which is a wild take on the french De l’impulsivité criminelle du Nord-Africain à la guerre de Libération nationale. ↩︎
Robcis, Camille. 2021. Disalienation: Politics, Philosophy, and Radical Psychiatry in Postwar France. University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226777887.001.0001. ↩︎
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1972) 1983. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ↩︎

BRD 1962: Nazis & Psychopathen

hi (hji) — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0200

cw: Diskussion von Psychiatrie, Eugenik, Euthanasie und Homofeindlichkeit anhand von expliziten Zitaten.

Irgendwann im letzten Sommer bin ich auf einem Flohmarkt hier in der Nachbarschaft über eine Kiste mit medizinischen Lehrbüchern aus den 50er und 60er Jahren gestolpert. Darunter war auch der Grundriß der Psychiatrie und Neurologie mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Untersuchungstechnik von Gerhard Kloos aus dem Jahr 1962. Mein Interesse hat das Buch vor allem geweckt, weil es aus der Zeit vor der Adoption des ICD zur Klassifikation von Diagnosen in Deutschland stammt. Zudem fiel in 1962 Homosexualität nicht nur noch klar in den Zuständigkeitsbereich der Psychiatrie (auch der DSM kennt bis 1973 Homosexualität als Diagnose), sondern war zudem noch kriminalisiert. Zunächst war ich also daran interessiert, wie in einem psychiatrischen Lehrbuch der Zeit mit Homosexualität und deren Kriminalisierung umgegangen wurde. Insofern habe ich bekommen was sich wollte: Kloos legt besonderen Wert auf die juristische Relevanz der von ihm dargestellten Pathologien. Anders als der DSM, der auch in seiner ersten Auflage von 1952 versuchte, eine klare Trennung von juristischen und klinischen Kategorien zu etablieren (American Psychiatric Association 1952, 10), besteht für Kloos eine klare Affinität zwischen Psychiatrie und Gerichtsbarkeit. In seiner Einleitung schreibt er, dass

[d]a der Arzt heute oft auch als Gutachter in Anspruch genommen wird, […] die gerichts- und sozial-medizinische Beurteilung der einzelnen Krankheiten, die sonst gewöhnlich zu kurz kommt, besonders berücksichtigt [wurde]. (Kloos 1962, 6)

Für den größten Teil des Buchs äußert sich die “gerichts- und sozial-medizinische Beurteilung” vorallem durch Kommentare zur Beurteilung von Zurechnungsfähigkeit und ob eine Krankheit als Scheidungsgrund zulässig ist. Insbesondere in Bezug auf “Psychopathie” geht Kloos allerdings weiter. Hier wird klar, dass Kloos das Verhältnis von Psychiatrie und Justiz als eine natürliche Symbiose versteht¹:

Als Psychopathie bezeichnet man angeborene Abnormalitäten der menschlichen Wesensart (ererbte Abwegigkeiten des Charakters, einschließlich des Temperaments, gleichsam “Mißbildungen” des Willens-, Trieb- und Gefühlslebens).

Psychopathie ist also kein Krankheitsvorgang (Prozeß), sondern eine von der Norm abweichende seelische Veranlagung (Konstitution). Die Träger solcher Abartigkeiten nennt man psychopathische Persönlichkeiten oder kurz Psychopathen. Ein Psychopath ist also ein charakterlich abnorm veranlagter Mensch. Über seine Intelligenz ist mit dieser Diagnose nichts ausgesagt; er kann geistig hochbegabt, durchschnittlich oder schwachsinnig sein. […] Psychopathen sind also einerseits keine Geisteskranken, denn es besteht bei ihnen kein psychischer Krankheitsprozeß, andererseits aber auch keine seelisch ganz gesunden Menschen, denn sie haben eine abnorme Wesensart. Diese ist jedoch nicht scharf abgrenzbar, sondern geht fließend in die Norm über; sie unterscheidet sich von dieser nur gradweise (quantitativ). […] Die Feststellung einer Abnormalität enthält hier zugleich eine Wertung: Von Psychopathie spricht man nur bei solchen Abartigkeiten des Gefühls- und Willenslebens, die für ihren Träger oder für die Gemeinschaft unerwünscht sind, weil sie zu innerseelischen oder (bzw. und) zwischenmenschlichen Schwierigkeiten führen. Es handelt sich also stets um eine irgendwie ungünstige Andersartigkeit des Wesens, welche die Lebenstüchtigkeit, Anpassungsfähigkeit und Brauchbarkeit des Betroffenen vermindert, ihm die persönliche oder soziale Bewährung im Lebenskampf erschwert. Psychopathen sind somit Versager (Leidende) oder Störer (Gemeinschaftsbelastende) oder beides zugleich; das zeigt sich überall, wo besondere Anforderungen an sie herantreten: im Beruf, in der Ehe, im Zusammenleben mit anderen Menschen, im Kriegsdienst und bei Schicksalsschlägen aller Art. (Kloos 1962, 426 f.)

Kloos grenzt Psychopathen von Kranken ab, indem er Psychopathie ihrem essenziellen Wesen zuschreibt, weiter verortetet er den Kern der Diagnose explizit in ihrer sozialen Bedeutung. Psychopathen werden insofern zum Gegenstand der Psychiatrie, wie sie die Gemeinschaft belasten. Kloos ist nicht subtil: Psychiatrie funktioniert hier als Erweiterung der Justiz mit dem Auftrag, die soziale Ordnung zu sanktionieren. Noch deutlicher ist er im Kontext jugendlicher Psychopathen, über die er, unter der Überschrift Schutz der Gemeinschaft vor Asozialen, schreibt:

Jede, selbst die beste Erziehung findet im Erbgut des Zöglings nicht nur ihre Grundlage, sondern auch ihre Grenze. Bei aller verdienten Achtung vor den Leistungen der Pädagogen teilen wir heute nicht mehr den naiven Glauben an die Allmacht der Erziehung, den die Vertreter der “Milieutheorie” noch hatten. Es gibt Jugendliche mit derart schlechter Veranlagung, daß alle Besserungsversuche, Zuchtmittel und Strafen bei ihnen erfolglos bleiben. Sie sind weder durch liebevolle Behandlung noch durch beharrliche Strenge von ihrer asozialen oder kriminellen Einstellung abzubringen. Aus ihrer Reihe gehen die späteren Berufsverbrecher und Außenseiter der Gesellschaft (Landstreicher, Zuhälter, Prostituierte usw.) hervor.

Diese Unerziehbaren gehören nicht in Erziehungsanstalten, sondern in Arbeitshäuser². Hier wird einerseits ihre Arbeitskraft noch nutzbringend verwendet, andererseits die Gemeinschaft vor ihnen wirksam geschützt. Der Mühe- und Kostenaufwand der Fürsorgeerziehung würde sich bei ihnen wegen Aussichtslosigkeit nicht lohnen. (Kloos 1962, 460)

Die Gruppe der ‘sexuell perversen Psychopathen’ ist dann auch direkt nach den Paragrafen des StGB unterteilt, über Homosexualität schreibt Kloos:

Homosexualität == sexuelle Liebe zu Menschen des gleichen Geschlechts. Homosexualität unter Männern nennt man Uranismus oder Päderastie (strafbar nach §175 und 175a StGB.) unter Frauen Tribadie oder lesbische Liebe (nicht strafbar). In der Pubertät sind Schwärmereien für gleichgeschlechtliche Lehrer oder Freunde nichts Außergewöhnliches, da die endgültige Sexualität sich aus einer ursprünglichen bisexuellen Anlage entwickelt; krankhaft ist nur das Ausbleiben der späteren Richtung des Sexualtriebes auf das andere Geschlecht. Die Homosexualität ist zum Teil anlagebedingt und dann oft mit Körpermerkmalen des anderen Geschlechts verbunden (z.B. hoher Stimme, breiten Hüften, weichlichen Gesichtszügen beim Manne), wozu sich auch eine Vorliebe für das Tragen der Kleidung des anderen Geschlechts gesellen kann (Transvestismus); zum größeren Teil entsteht sie aber durch Verführung in der Jugend, da die ersten geschlechtlichen Erlebnisse für das endgültige Sexualziel meist entscheidend sind; die verführten Jugendlichen bleiben einfach in der Homosexualität stecken. Daher die scharfen Strafmaßnahmen gegen homosexuelle Jugendverderber. Die Homosexualität kommt in allen Graden vor: von der hingebenden Freude am Bilden und Lenken junger Menschen des gleichen Geschlechts bis zu den groben Formen körperlicher Sexualbetätigung. (gegenseitige Onanie, Lutsch- und Afterverkehr). (Kloos 1962, 433)

Kloos beschränkt sich an dieser Stelle nicht auf die Feststellung faktisch gegebener strafrechtlicher Relevanz, sondern liefert gleich eine (sozial-)psychiatrische Begründung der Rechtslage. In diesen Passagen wird eine Medizin/Psychiatrie dargestellt, deren Aufgaben eine Sorge um die Gesundheit des Volkskörpers im völkischsten, eugenischsten Sinne umfasst.

Figure 1: Gerhard Kloos (Koller 2019, 24)

Der geneigten Leser’in wird die Nähe Kloosens Vokabular zur Sprache des Nationalsozialismus aufgefallen sein. Die erste Auflage seines Lehrbuchs veröffentlichte Kloos in 1944 (Kloos 1944). Zu diesem Zeitpunkt war er Leiter der Landesheilanstalten Stadtroda, wo, unter seiner Verantwortung ab spätestens 1942, in der dort angegliederten Kinderfachabteilung Stadtroda behinderte Kinder ermordet wurden (Hill 2008, 8; Schmuhl 2010).

Seiner Karriere nach 1945 schadete seine Rolle in der Nazi-Eugenik kaum. Nach dem Krieg wurden alle Vorwürfe bzgl. Euthanasieverbrechen gegen Kloos wegen fehlender Beweise fallen gelassen. Zwar wurde ihm seine Habilitation aberkannt, doch konnte er sich bereits Anfang der 50er in Kiel neu habilitieren und war ab 1954 Direktor des Landeskrankenhauses Göttingen (Koller 2019). Ab 1958 übernahm er Lehraufträge an der Technischen Hochschule Braunschweig und der Universität Göttingen. In Göttingen war er auch als Sachverständiger in Wiedergutmachungsverfahren tätig (Klee 2003). Wir wissen schon, dass auch sein neurologisch-psychiatrisches Lehrbuch in der BRD weiterhin genutzt wurde, aber auch seine “Anleitung zur Intelligenzprüfung im Erbgesundheitsgerichtsverfahren”, die er 1942 als Beisitzer des Erbgesundheitsgerichts Jena veröffentlichte, wurde – revidiert, unter dem Titel Anleitung zur Intelligenzprüfung in der psychiatrischen Diagnostik (Kloos 1965) – in der BRD wieder publiziert (in der DDR wurde die Republikation verhindert) (Polianski 2020; Kloos 1965).

Kloos machte nie einen Hehl daraus, durchaus von der Richtigkeit, sogar der Notwendigkeit von Euthanasie und “Erbgesundheitspflege” überzeugt zu sein. Nachdem Helmut Becker (geb. 1941) in 1983 auf dem 86. Deutschen Ärzte Tag beklagte, dass die medizinische Ausbildung in der BRD immer noch von Nazis dominiert sei und Kloos und dessen Lehrbuch als Beispiel nannte, klagte letzterer wegen Beleidigung (Halter 1988). Auch in diesem Prozess positioniert sich Kloos nicht gegen Euthanasie, diese sei notwendig, das habe er immer eingesehen. Und doch habe es in seiner Institution keine Tötungen gegeben:

„Das stimmt doch alles nicht“, empört sich der grauhaarige alte Herr mit dem Schmiß in der linken Gesichtshälfte. Aber er war doch in der Kanzlei des Führers? Ja, er wurde über die geheime Reichssache unterrichtet, aber schon damals habe er seinen Gesprächspartnern klargemacht, daß eine solche Tötungsabteilung in Stadtroda nicht infrage komme. Die Leute in Thüringen seien nämlich viel zu geschwätzig, da lasse sich so etwas schlecht geheim halten. Außerdem sähe man es auf dem Friedhof, der neben dem Krankenhaus lag, sofort, wenn dort massenhaft Kinder begraben würden. Wie steht denn der Professor zur Kindereuthanasie? Schon damals, sagt er vor Gericht, habe er eingesehen, daß es so etwas geben müsse. In manchen Fällen sei das Leben quälender als der sanfte Tod. Nur er selbst habe nie so etwas praktiziert.

„Ich bin Fleischesser, aber schlachte nicht selbst“, sind die erklärenden Worte des Professors. (Wilmes 1985)

Becker wird in 1985 freigesprochen, Kloos darf Euthanasietäter genannt werden, Kloos legt Berufung ein, das Berufungsverfahren läuft bis Kloos es im Jahr seines Todes 1988 fallen lässt (Halter 1988), im gleichen Jahr erscheint die 10. und letzte Auflage seines Psychiatrie-Lehrbuchs (Polianski 2020; Kloos and Simon 1988).

References

American Psychiatric Association. 1952. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 1st edition. Washington D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.

Halter, Hans. 1988. “»Die Mörder sind noch unter uns« Ns-Ärzte: Von der Euthanasie.” Der Spiegel: Politik, June 19, 1988. https://www.spiegel.de/politik/die-moerder-sind-noch-unter-uns-ns-aerzte-von-der-euthanasie-a-9c82c3f3-0002-0001-0000-000013529152.

Hill, Jennifer. 2008. “Zum schicksal männlicher patienten der jenaer psychiatrischen- und nervenklinik 1933 bis 1945 nach ihren verlegung in die landesheilanstalten stadtroda und blankenhain.” PhD thesis, Jena. https://www.db-thueringen.de/receive/dbt_mods_00011858.

Klee, Ernst. 2003. Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich: wer war was vor und nach 1945. Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer.

Kloos, Gerhard. 1944. Grundriss Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie Mit Besonderer Berücksichtigung Der Untersuchungstechnik. Sammlung Medizinischer Grundrisse. München: Müller & Steinicke.

———. 1962. Grundriß Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie Mit Besonderer Berücksichtigung Der Untersuchungstechnik. 6. Auflage. München: Verlag von Rudolph Müller & Steinecke.

———. 1965. Anleitung zur Intelligenzprüfung in der psychiatrischen Diagnostik. 5., unveränd. Aufl. Stuttgart: Fischer.

Kloos, Gerhard, and Walther Simon. 1988. Grundriss Der Psychiatrie Und Neurologie: Unter Besonderer Berücksichtigung Der Untersuchungstechnik. Müller und Steinicke.

Koller, Manfred. 2019. “Die Geschichte Der Psychiatrie in Göttingen – Schwerpunkt LKH.” In 150 Jahre Universitätspsychiatrie in Göttingen, 9–36. V&R unipress. https://doi.org/10.14220/9783737009010.9.

Polianski, Igor J. 2020. “Psychiatrische Fachbücher aus dem Nationalsozialismus und die zensorische Praxis in der SBZ und frühen DDR.” Der Nervenarzt 91 (3): 261–67. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00115-019-0726-2.

Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. 2010. “Kinderheilkunde in der NS-Zeit: Sozialsanitäres Großprojekt – Arzt am „Volkskörper‘.” Deutsches Ärzteblatt. November 12, 2010. https://www.aerzteblatt.de/archiv/79245/Kinderheilkunde-in-der-NS-Zeit-Sozialsanitaeres-Grossprojekt-Arzt-am-Volkskoerper.

Wilmes, Annette. 1985. “Der Fleischesser schlachtet nicht selbst.” Die Zeit, March 8, 1985. https://www.zeit.de/1985/11/der-fleischesser-schlachtet-nicht-selbst.

Der ganze Abschnitt zu Psychopathie findet sich hier als pdf. ↩︎
Arbeitshäuser als Alternative zu Gefängnishaft bestanden in der BRD bis 1970. ↩︎

The Existential Dread of Being a Dog

hi (hji) — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0200

We can make a perhaps surprising Sartrean contribution to this problem, which is especially interesting due to its links with Lacan; this time, instead of Lacan following Sartre, the situation is more the reverse. I am referring to a relatively unknown passage from The Family Idiot. It concerns the life of a pet dog.

“Pure ennui de vivre” is a pearl of culture. It seems clear that household animals are bored; they are homunculae, the dismal reflections of their masters. Culture has penetrated them, destroying nature in them without replacing it. Language is their major frustration: they have a crude understanding of its function but cannot use it; it is enough for them to be the objects of speech – they are spoken to, they are spoken about, they know it. This manifest verbal power which is denied to them cuts through them, settles within them as the limit of their powers, it is a disturbing privation which they forget in solitude and which deprecates their very natures when they are with men. I have seen fear and rage grow in a dog. We were talking about him, he knew it instantly because our faces were turned toward him as he lay dozing on the carpet and because the sounds struck him with full force as if we were addressing him. Nevertheless we were speaking to each other. He felt it; our words seemed to designate him as our interlocutor and yet reached him blocked. He did not quite understand either the act itself or this exchange of speech, which concerned him far more than the usual hum of our voices – that lively and meaningless noise with which men surround themselves – and far less than an order given by his master or a call supported by a look or gesture. Or rather – for the intelligence of these humanized beasts is always beyond itself, lost in the imbroglio of its presence and its impossibilities – he was bewildered at not understanding what he understood. He began by waking up, bounding toward us, but stopped short, then whined with an uncoordinated agitation and finished by barking angrily. This dog passed from discomfort to rage, feeling at his expense the strange reciprocal mystification which is the relationship between man and animal. (Sartre, The Family Idiot, vol. 1, trans. Carol Cosman, p. 137-138)

As Lacan would say, Sartre’s dog is the object of the discourse of the Other, caught inside of yet excluded from the symbolic order. And it is as if the beast were frozen there, stuck in that object-position, unable to do anything but growl and whimper. While the human has a mastery of language that the dog can never possess, it too bears within itself the echo of this same existential malaise. There is no fully cultural being, no human that is not a “humanized beast”: the gap between nature and culture is never completely bridged, the human remains a creature of this unstable transition, always in a process of becoming. And to connect this idea of a gap with our previous discussion: in Lacanian terms, Sartre’s pet dog is confronted by the Thing, a zone of confusion and disorientation which is covered neither by nature (the compass of pleasure and unpleasure) nor by culture (institutional laws and norms). The dog is caught in the empty transition or caesura between instincts and institutions, and it is this gap that is the cause of the “reciprocal mystification” between humans and animals – a mystification that the human animal has internalized, and which constitutes its blurry and unstable difference.

[…] For Deleuze, the dog’s bow-wow is the stupidest cry of the animal kingdom. But maybe its dumb cries are not simply those of training and obedience, but express a more uncanny becoming that got stuck halfway. “Thus childhood is no longer an age but an animal category: there are monkeys, there are dogs, there are children. Perhaps, if carefully inspected, the child is merely a dog who is unaware of itself.” (Sartre, The Family Idiot, vol. 1, 346.)

Schuster, Aaron. 2016. The Trouble with Pleasure: Deleuze and Psychoanalysis. Short Circuits. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. 148 ff.

Figure 1: Deleuze, Barking. (source)

Germany 1937 Colorized

hi (hji) — Sun, 02 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0100

God knows why, but I sometimes get nostalgia content in my algorithmic feeds, YouTube has been especially eager for me to look at footage from 100 years ago, interviews with people born in the 19th century and what not. Occasionally there’s more overt Nazi propaganda in there, up to Wehrmacht apologia and weird Nazi occultism. So I wasn’t particularly surprised when recently YouTube recommended me to watch a clip titled Rural Germany in 1937 | Restored & Colorized Footage with Added Ambient Sound. Usually I try not to interact with these videos – I don’t want to encourage the algorithmic gods – but this one caught my attention, maybe it’s just the current state of the world.

The video now has about 1.7 million views and is a nine minute collage of scenes from everyday life in rural 1937s Germany, we see a market, women buying apples, men buying pigs. People working in fields, herding cattle, tending to horses. A woman looking out of the window while petting her cat – you get the picture.

The description frames the video as nostalgic evidence of a simpler time:

Travel back to the serene rural life of Germany in 1937 with this beautifully restored and colorized vintage footage. Featuring scenes from the charming towns of Friedrichshafen and Dinkelsbühl, this video captures the nostalgic essence of a simpler time.

Watch as locals go about their day in traditional attire, showcasing crafts, agriculture, livestock, and open-air markets. The picturesque German countryside, with its distinctive rural architecture and timeless traditions, comes alive with the addition of carefully designed ambient sound, immersing you in the peaceful rhythm of village life.

This rare glimpse into history highlights the cultural richness and tranquility of rural Germany in the 1930s. Perfect for history buffs, fans of vintage aesthetics, and anyone seeking to experience the beauty of a bygone era.

Leaving aside that it calls a janky AI job “beautifully restored and colorized”, the video itself does a decent job in delivering what’s promised, the color and ambient noise produce a sense of immediacy, as one commenter notes:

Klasse das es in Farbe ist. Die alten s/w Dokus sind mir immer sehr fremd bzw. kann da nicht eintauchen. Gerne mehr davon.

Great that it’s in color. The old b/w documentaries are always very foreign to me, I can’t immerse myself in them. I’d love to see more. (my trans.)

Most comments under the video are in a similar vein. Telling stories of relatives who spoke about the kind of life on display in the clips, recounting their own experience of rural Germany, revelling in “the cultural richness and tranquility of rural Germany in the 1930” as the video description puts it.

There’s an obvious wrinkle in the image of the good old times here: In 1937 the Nazis had been in charge for four years and thoroughly consolidated their power in the institutions and civil society. Political enemies of the Nazis were already deported to concentration camps, Jews, Romani, Black, disabled and queer people faced legal persecution and exclusion from society. There’s no space for all that in the image of ordinary life painted by the video, nor in the comment section.

Yet the Nazis are by no means absent from the discussion. A number of comments talk about how two years later catastrophe would strike and end these glorious times. One commenter bemoans the young’uns from the video probably being used as cannon fodder just a few years later, another diagnoses “the right wing” being responsible for this worlds demise. What’s striking is that in all these comments the catastrophe is positioned chronologically after the time of the video. The whole comment section is quite evocative of Aimé Césaire’s famous dictum that Europe could never forgive Hitler the humiliation of the European white man. Not the Jews, not the Queers, not the Romani are treated as the victims here: The real victims seem to be the innocence, the tranquility and cultural richness of rural Germany and “all European villages from Normandy to the Urals” as one commenter says. Quite explicitly the catastrophe is understood to be the destruction of a prelapsarian Europe by the second World War.

It seems a striking exhibition of how life goes on, how you can live under a fascist regime, even during a genocide and just go on with your life as long as you yourself are not personally targeted. The market is still open, you still need to eat and pay rent and the apples are as sweet as ever. Even worse: It’s a demonstration how, by keeping death just out of view, you can even make life in fascism a nostalgic utopia for people who should be aware of what Germany in 1937 was. The year is not hidden, the Nazis are just out of frame – literally.

The footage in the video is taken from recordings by Julien Bryan, who in 1937 spent seven weeks in Germany. There he filmed Germans going about their day, very consciously capturing and making explicit the ways in which Nazism was ever present in civil society; swastika flags, shops and doctors advertising to be true Aryans, others being marked as Jewish and people interacting with SS officers, children being part of the Nazis’ youth organisations, exhibitions of ‘Degenerate Art’.¹

Your Browser doesn't support html video. Here's a direct link to the video.

Bryan's unedited footage.

Watching the unedited footage it’s clear that the YouTube video was very carefully edited to omit all signs of Nazism. Sometimes it’s just the omission of that one camera angle in which the swastika in the background is in full view. As I said: The Nazis are just out of frame. To construct a nostalgic image of everyday life in 1937 Germany evidently involves more than some sloppy AI colorization: It requires an active effort of repression of how interwoven the genocidal element of German society was with the tranquil village life we’re seeing. This necessity is instructive in another way: It also hides the fact that, yes life goes on, even under fascism – if you’re not targeted – but it requires a commitment to not see the catastrophe all around you, just as the ordinary day on the market required to not be bothered by swastikas and doctors advertising to be Aryan.

In 1938 Bryan’s footage was used in the March of Time newsreel Inside Nazi Germany, which is itself noteworthy for its historical role in the development of documentary film as a medium for political agitation (Fielding 1959). In 2003 Bryan’s footage was acquired by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive who provide online access to most of the material.

People might not believe my story if I told it in words when I returned to America. Everyone would believe my pictures. (Julien Bryan)

The quote is probably about Bryan’s later work, documenting the German invasion of Poland. It wasn’t quite that easy to get an anti-fascist effect out of the material of 1937, apparently quite a few of his American contemporaries thought the footage of well nourished youth and well groomed soldiers made Nazi Germany quite attractive (Fielding 1959), after all the footage was produced with Nazi approval. The contestation of the meaning of the images is not new, although the very deliberate editing, not even just decontextualizing the images but omitting an integral part of what Bryan was attempting to capture, certainly adds another layer of repression to the construction of the nostalgic past.

The insidiousness here lies in the construction of a normality that makes it easy to ignore the death just out of frame. The video doesn’t show the Nazis, it paints a romanticized picture of rural life that invites engagement as just that, you could criticize the image of rural life in the first half of the 20th century on those grounds, in fact this sentiment is much more prevalent in the comments to the video than any acknowledgement of its Nazi context. Yet this critique, while generally worthwhile, is missing the point: It accepts the frame that Germany in 1937 is a place like any other, one that can be depicted without engagement with the ongoing preparations of the Holocaust and the repression already in place. The video could have been presented without giving a year, which is really the only evidence of the context given, but it wasn’t; the video could’ve included the explicit Nazi insignia present in the source material, but it doesn’t. The effect is the depoliticization of everyday life under fascism.

Figure 1: Look, it's just some good-natured nostalgia content.

Figure 2: I wonder what else this guy is up to ...

References

Fielding, Raymond. 1959. “Mirror of Discontent: The March of Time and Its Politically Controversial Film Issues.” The Western Political Quarterly 12 (1): 145. https://doi.org/10.2307/444198.

A compilation of Bryan’s work that contains all the footage used in the YouTube Video including a time stamped index can be found on archive-akh.de. The material is also available in the online archive of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, although there the footage used in the YouTube video is spread over a range of shorter segments. ↩︎

Hennig's Geradehalter

hi (hji) — Thu, 06 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

I’ve recently posted about Moritz Schreber’s Geradehalter. Afterwards I noticed that there is another Gradehalter that is attributed to Schreber in various places, notably Wikipedia. As depcited above, this Geradehalter ist somewhat more involved, not just a barrier screwed to the table but straps and loops to be put around the child’s head and body (Hennig and Schreber 1882, 155).

This version of the Gradehalter is not actually Schrebers design, rather it’s designed by Carl Hennig who edited the second and third revised editions of Schreber’s Kallipädie and used the opportunity to replace some of Schreber’s contraptions with his own.

Figure 1: Hennig's Geradehalter (Hennig and Schreber 1882, 156)

I don’t know where the confusion started, William Niederland attributed the second Geradehalter to Hennig but didn’t provide a source for either the illustrations he included, nor Hennig as the designer (Niederland 1959, 155). It seems hardly any of the later authors bothered to check the primary sources.

Figure 2: Hennig's version of the Schulterband (Hennig and Schreber 1882, 151)

References

Hennig, Carl, and Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber. 1882. Das Buch der Erziehung an Leib und Seele: für Eltern, Erzieher und Lehrer. Dritte, stark vermehrte Auflage. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. http://archive.org/details/b28081158.

Niederland, William G. 1959. “Schreber: Father and Son.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 28 (2): 151–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674086.1959.11926132.

Schreber's Geradehalter

hi (hji) — Wed, 05 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Moritz Schreber’s contraptions have gained some notoriety since William Niederland connected them to the etiology of Paul Schreber’s psychosis (Niederland 1959). Especially the Geradehalter (straight holder) has gotten a lot of attention. It’s a fairly simple idea: put a physical barrier in front of a child sitting at a table and they can’t slump over the table or lean on their elbows, forcing ‘proper posture’. Here’s how Schreber himself describes it:

Um nun die fehlerfreie Art des Sitzens bei der Arbeit möglich zu machen bedarf es durchaus einer äusseren Vorkehrung; denn selbst die strengste Beaufsichtigung ist nicht im Stande, dies auf die Dauer durchzuführen, schon deshalb nicht, weil es vom Kinde zu viel verlangen hiesse, die Aufmerksamkeit auf seine Arbeit zu concentriren und gleichzeitig immerwährend auch an seine Haltung zu denken. […] Ich liess daher einen Geradhalter anfertigen, der sich nach mehrfachen Proben an meinen eigenen Kindern und an den Pfleglingen meiner orthopädischen Heilanstalt in der nachstehenden Form am zweckmässigsten bewährt hat. […]

Der Geradhalter ist durchweg von Eisen und überall leicht anwendbar. Er ist vermöge der mit e bezeichneten Stellschraube beliebig höher oder tiefer zu stellen, so dass er allen Grössenverhältnissen (auch für Erwachsene) angepasst werden kann. Nachdem zuerst die Höhe des Sitzes regulirt ist, wird der Geradhalter durch Schraube e so gestellt, dass der horizontale abgerundete Stab a b gerade der Schulterhöhe gleichzustehen kommt. Dieser Stab verhindert jeden Versuch des Schiefsitzens, des Vorfallens mit Oberkörper und Kopf, des Andrückens der Brust oder des Unterleibes. Lehnt sich das Kind an den Stab, so ist dies ohne Nachtheil, weil derselbe quer über die Schlüsselbeine und die vorderen Schulterknochen zu liegen kommt. Aber auch ein solches Anlehnen wird das Kind wegen des durch den Druck des harten Körpers auf die Knochen bald entstehenden unangenehmen Gefühles nicht lange fortsetzen und von selbst in die freie straffe Haltung zurückkehren. Bei den kleinsten der schulfähigen Kinder wird der senkrechte Stab c d zwar etwas tief unter die Tafel zu stehen kommen; doch hat auch dies keinen Nachtheil, vielmehr den Nutzen, das Uebereinanderschlagen der Beine zu verhindern. […]

Durch den regelmässigen Gebrauch dieses Geradhalters werden der Beaufsichtigung der Kinder alle jene verdriesslichen und doch fruchtlosen Sorgen und Mühen, welche dieser Punkt ausserdem verursacht, erspart. Ein halbes oder höchstens ganzes Jahr ausnahmslosen Gebrauches ist in der Regel ausreichend, um die Gewohnheit einer regelrechten Haltung bei allen Beschäftigungen im Sitzen so fest zu begründen, dass fernerhin jede künstliche Vorkehrung entbehrlich ist, und nur für die Möglichkeit einer rückfälligen Neigung die Massregel in Bereitschaft bleibt. (Schreber 1858, 203 ff.)

Figure 1: (Schreber 1858, 205)

Now imagine my surprise when I randomly stumbled over Schreber’s contraption on Instagram.

Your Browser doesn't support html video. Here's a direct link to the video.

Things you find on Instagram

The account ohmytechnology that posted the video is interesting in itself, as it is not clear whether they’re actually selling any of the products they’re posting. At least there’s no obvious way to buy them attached to the account. The only links I could find lead to some Telegram channel, at which point I stopped investigating. It’s probably more about the presentation, farming clicks, growing the account itself, rather then selling the products. That fits the presentation as well (wth is going on with the bunny??). But versions of the Geradehalter are readily available for purchase on Amazon. It seems that the idea of using “external measures” to inscribe proper posture into childrens bodies is at least somewhat alive.

There has been some debate over Schreber seniors prominence and whether he’s really the original source for the contraptions. These doubts are fair, it is a pretty obvious design once you’re set on keeping a child sitting straight. What might matter more is the question of how widely contraptions like the Geradehalter were (and are) used. Han Israëls found some evidence that the Geradehalter was indeed widely known and mentions the visceral reaction a woman born in 1909 had, when confronted with pictures of the Geradehalter. Apparently it was never used on her, but existed as a threat for much of her childhood (Israëls 1989, 199).

Besides there are many ways to force a child to sit ‘properly’: My Grandma (born 1943 in Germany) used to tell stories about being made to balance a book on her head while having two more clamped under her arms at the dining table in the name of proper posture. As with the woman above: These techniques were never used on me, but the stories were told as threats of what might be meassures taken if we children didn’t sit up (didn’t work; I have horrible posture).

The Geradehalter is not the only contraption connected to Schreber senior that’s still around. The Schulterband (shoulder strap) he recommends to use to prevent bad shoulder posture (Schreber 1858, 198) seems to be even more popular, granted the versions on Amazon seem mostly aimed at adults.

Figure 2: Moritz Schreber's Schulterband (Schreber 1858, 198).

I don’t have a big conclusion here, it’s just interesting how these things come around.

References

Israëls, Han. 1989. Schreber: Vater und Sohn: eine Biographie. München: Verl. Internat. Psychoanalyse.

Niederland, William G. 1959. “Schreber: Father and Son.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 28 (2): 151–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674086.1959.11926132.

Schreber, Daniel Gottlob Moritz. 1858. Kallipädie, oder, Erziehung zur Schönheit durch naturgetreue und gleichmässige Förderung normaler Körperbildung, lebenstüchtiger Gesundheit und geistiger Veredelung und insbesondere durch möglichste Benutzung specieller Erziehungsmittel: für Aeltern, Erzieher und Lehrer. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. https://archive.org/details/b28081080.

Dossier: Daniel Paul Schreber

hi (hji) — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0200

Collection of literature and other artifacts relating to Paul Schrebers Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken.

(Cover image by Jan Peter Tripp, who, full disclosure, seems not big on that whole having his work on the internet thing http://janpetertripp.com/)

Excuse the wild mix of editions and translations, what edition I put on the list is mostly based on what I have access to. Might clean up later.

The List is by no means complete and I’ll keep expanding it. If you know of anything I should add or want to talk about related stuff send me an email lou@repetitions.de.

Paul Schreber

Paul Schreber is our main subject, the Denkwürdigkeiten have been published numerous times, I’m listing some currently available editions.

German editions:

Schreber, Daniel Paul. (1903) 2016. Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken. Hofenberg.
Schreber, Daniel Paul. (1903) 2003. Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken: nebst Nachträgen. Berlin: Kadmos.

Schreber ([1903] 2016) is much cheaper but doesn’t include the addendum with the court records on Schreber. I haven’t had the chance to verify but those should be included in Schreber ([1903] 2003).

The whole book, including the court records is also available on Projekt Gutenberg.

English edition:

Schreber, Daniel Paul. 2000. Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. New York: New York Review Books.

includes the Addenda.

Moritz Schreber

Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber, Paul Schrebers father, and, though mostly absent from the manifest content of Pauls writing, one of the primary figures in subsequent interpretations of them. Further down we’ll see that Moritz has been mobilised in a number of ways to illuminate or even explain Pauls condition.

Moritz wrote a lot of books, I’ll just list the ones I think are the most discussed in the literature on Paul:

Schreber, Daniel Gottlob Moritz. 1858. Kallipädie, oder, Erziehung zur Schönheit durch naturgetreue und gleichmässige Förderung normaler Körperbildung, lebenstüchtiger Gesundheit und geistiger Veredelung und insbesondere durch möglichste Benutzung specieller Erziehungsmittel: für Aeltern, Erzieher und Lehrer. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. https://archive.org/details/b28081080.
Schreber, Daniel Gottlob Moritz. 1862. Pangymnastikon, Oder das Ganze Turnsystem an Einem Einzigen Geräthe Ohne Raumerforderniss als einfachstes Mittel zur Entwicklung höchster und allseitiger Muskelkraft, Körperdurchbildung und Lebenstüchtigkeit. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. https://archive.org/details/daspangymnastiko00schr.
Schreber, Daniel Gottlob Moritz. (1855) 1875. Aerztliche Zimmergymnastik Oder System der Ohne Geräth und Beistand Ueberall Ausführbaren Heilgymnastischen Freiübungen Als Mittel der Gesundheit und Lebenstüchtigkeit. Für Beide Geschlechter, Jedes Alter und Alle Gebrauchszwecke. Zweite unveränderte Auflage. Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer. https://archive.org/details/b28126385.

Recent Writing on Moritz Schreber

Gilman, Sander L. 2018. Stand Up Straight! A History of Posture. London: Reaktion Books.
Brücker, Tobias. 2024. “Der Alltag Arbeitet Mit an Den Gedanken.” NietzschePOParts. September 2, 2024. https://www.nietzsche-poparts.ch/posts/der-alltag-arbeitet-mit-den-gedanken.

Case Studies

Freud

Figure 1: Freud and Jung when they were buddies.

Freuds study of Schrebers writing marks the start of most of the literature i’m collecting here.

Freud, Sigmund. (1911) 2007. “Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen über einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides).” In Zwei Fallberichte: psychoanalytische Bemerkungen über einen autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia (Dementia paranoides); eine Teufelsneurose im siebzehnten Jahrhundert, by Sigmund Freud, Zweite, unveränderte Auflage. Fischer-Taschenbücher Fischer-Psychologie 10450. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag.

It’s also Published in

Freud, Sigmund. 1945. Werke Aus Den Jahren 1909–1913. Edited by Anna Freud, E. Bibring, W. Hoffer, E. Kris, and O. Isakower. Vol. VIII. Gesammelte Werke. London: Imago Publishing Co., LTD.

and in the Standard Edition:

Freud, Sigmund. 1958. Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Vol.12 (1911-1913). Edited by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press.

others

Ferenczi? Jung?

Klein, Melanie. 1946. “Notes on Some Schizoid Mechanisms.” In Envy and Gratitude and Other Works 1946-1963, Volume III:1–24. The Writings of Melanie Klein. New York: THE FREE PRESS.
Lacan, Jacques, and Jacques-Alain Miller. 1966. Ecrits. Le Champ Freudien. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Lacan, Jacques. 1981. Le Séminaire : Livre III : Les Psychoses (1955-1956). Edited by Jacques-Alain Miller. Le Champ Freudien. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Lipton, A. A. 1984. “Was the ‘Nervous Illness’ of Schreber a Case of Affective Disorder?” The American Journal of Psychiatry 141 (10): 1236–39. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.141.10.1236.
Sass, L. A. 1987. “Schreber’s Panopticism: Psychosis and the Modern Soul.” Social Research 54: 101–47.
Allison, David B., Prado de Oliveira, Mark S. Roberts, and Allen S. Weiss, eds. 1988. Psychosis and Sexual Identity: Toward a Post-Analytic View of the Schreber Case. Illustrated Edition. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press.
Busse, Gerhard. 1991. “Schreber, Freud Und Die Suche Nach Dem Vater Über Die Realitätsschaffende Kraft Einer Wissenschaftlichen Hypothese.” Europäische Hochschulschriften : Reihe 3, Geschichte Und Ihre Hilfswissenschaften 480. Frankfurt am Main [u.a: Lang.
Hentschel, Rüdiger. 1992. “Sache selbst und Nichtdenkungsgedanke Husserls phänomenlogische Region bei Schreber, Adorno und Derrida.” Wien [u.a: Turia & Kant.
Sass, Louis A. 1994a. “‘My So-Called Delusions’: Solipsism, Madness, and the Schreber Case.” Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 25 (1): 70–103. https://doi.org/10.1163/156916294X00124.
Sass, Louis A. 1994b. The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind. Cornell University Press. https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501732560.
Zuk, Gerald H., and Carmen V. Zuk. 1995. “Freud’s Theory of Paranoid Delusion Based on the Schreber Case Contrasted with Related Theories.” Contemporary Family Therapy 17 (2): 209–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02252359.
Erdheim, Mario. 1996. “Canetti und Freud als Leser von Schrebers „Denkwürdigkeiten eines Nervenkranken‘.” In Psychoanalyse heute: Klinische und kulturtheoretische Perspektiven, edited by Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber and Ralf Zwiebel, 159–77. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-322-87290-6_9.
Zuk, G. H., and C. V. Zuk. 1998. “Schreber, Perceval, and Van Gogh: Three Eminent Cases Considered from the Perspective of Four Characteristics of Psychosis.” Contemporary Family Therapy 20 (2): 139–46. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025021308030.
Gottlieb, Sue. 2006. “Some Thoughts on Schreber (and Freud): Depression, Paranoia and a Delusional System.” British Journal of Psychotherapy 22 (4): 427–28. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1752-0118.2006.tb00302.x.
Martin, Graeme. 2007. “Schreber’s ‘Bellowing Miracle’: A New Content Analysis of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness.” Journal of Nervous & Mental Disease 195 (8): 640–46. https://doi.org/10.1097/NMD.0b013e31811f404c.
Tata, Michael Angelo. 2010. “From Daniel Paul Schreber through the Dr. Phil Family: Modernity, Neurology and the Cult of the Case Study Superstar.” In Neurology and Modernity: A Cultural History of Nervous Systems, 1800–1950, edited by Laura Salisbury and Andrew Shail, 163–83. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230278004_9.
Dalzell, Thomas G. 2011. Freud’s Schreber Between Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis: On Subjective Disposition to Psychosis. 1st ed. Oxford: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429475078.
Shengold, Leonard. 2013. “Child Abuse and Deprivation: Soul Murder 1.” In If You Can’t Trust Your Mother, Who Can You Trust?, 1st ed., 235–49. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429475726-12.
Lang, Birgit, and Katie Sutton. 2016. “The Queer Cases of Psychoanalysis: Rethinking the Scientific Study of Homosexuality, 1890s–1920s.” German History 34 (3): 419–44. https://doi.org/10.1093/gerhis/ghw038.
We’re All President Schreber: On Culture, Narcissism and Paranoia. 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2L8FXrIYvg.
Benjamin, Walter. 2020. “Bücher von Geisteskranken.” In Gesammelte Schriften. Band IV, edited by Tillman Rexroth, Rolf Tiedemann, and Hermann Schweppenhäuser, 6. Auflage, 615–19. Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 934. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

The tyrannical Father

The Literature focusing on the real Moritz Schreber as the central figure of Schrebers illness, starts with Niederlands publications on Moritz’ books. While Niederland remains somewhat conservative with such diagnoses, later authors make Moritz Schrebers methods of child rearing, that he also supposedly applied in the upbringing of his own children, directly responsible for Pauls illness.

Niederland, William G. 1959. “Schreber: Father and Son.” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly 28 (2): 151–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/21674086.1959.11926132.
Niederland, William G. 1984. The Schreber Case: Psychoanalytic Profile of a Paranoid Personality. Expanded ed. Hillsdale, N.J.: Analytic Press : Distributed by L. Erlbaum Associates.
Schatzman, Morton. 1973. Soul Murder: Persecution in the Family. New York, Random House. http://archive.org/details/soulmurderpersec00scha.
Miller, Alice. (1983) 2022. Am Anfang war Erziehung. 29. Auflage. Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch 951. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Israëls, Han. 1989. Schreber: Vater und Sohn: eine Biographie. München: Verl. Internat. Psychoanalyse.

Israëls (1989) aims to be a correction to various discussions of Moritz Schreber, substantiated with extentsive archival work, Israëls argues that Moritz Schreber has been severely misrepresented both with regards to his general fame and his person as a house tyrant. His work has a clear anti-psychoanalytic bend.

Lothane, Zvi. 1992. In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.

Lothane (1992) picks up Israëls thread, both going further in trying to rehabilitate Moritz Schreber and criticizing Israëls for downplaying his general fame and accomplishment. With extensive discussions of Paul Schrebers psychiatrists as well as her court case Lothane shifts the focus of the discussion away from the father to the institutions Paul Schreber is dealing with.

Stobaugh, Nathan. 2018. “Don’t Wake Daddy: Martin Kippenberger and the Schreber Case.” October 166 (166): 73–104. https://doi.org/10.1162/octo_a_00334.
Müller-Münch, Ingrid. 2013. Die geprügelte Generation: Kochlöffel, Rohrstock und die Folgen | Ein eindringlicher Bericht aus den Kinderzimmern der Fünfziger- und Sechzigerjahre. 8th ed. München Zürich: Piper Taschenbuch.

(Müller-Münch 2013) is an example of a recent popularization of Schreber the abusive father.

Schreber & (Anti-)Psychiatry

Beyer, Bernhard. 1912. Die Bestrebungen zur Reform des Irrenwesens Material zu einem Reichs-Irrengesetz ; für Ärzte und Laien. Psychiatrisch-Neurologische Wochenschrift Erg.-Bd. Halle a.S: Marhold.
Mannoni, Maud. 1970. le psychiatre, son “fou” et la psychanalyse. Le Champ Freudien. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. http://archive.org/details/lepsychiatresonf0000unse.

Notably referenced in Anti Oedipus for claiming Schrebers court case to be the first success of Anti-Psychiatry (Deleuze and Guattari 1972, 437; Mannoni 1970, 165).

Mannoni, Octave. 1969. “Schreber Als Schreiber.” In Clefs Pour L’imaginaire : Ou l’Autre Scène, by Octave Mannoni, 75–99. Le Champ Freudien. Paris: Éditions du Seuil.
Lothane, Zvi. 1992. In Defense of Schreber: Soul Murder and Psychiatry. Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press.
Hackler, Ruben Marc. 2010. “Die Allianz von Recht und Medizin um 1903: eine Fallstudie zu Daniel Paul Schrebers Selbstbehauptungsstrategien im Rechtsstreit um seine ‘Geschäftstüchtigkeit’.” BIOS - Zeitschrift für Biographieforschung, Oral History und Lebensverlaufanalysen 23 (1): 114–26. https://nbn-resolving.org/ urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-354301.
Scharfetter, Christian. 2011. “Ich-Zerfall und Selbstrettung: Daniel Paul Schreber.” In Spurensuche in der Psychopathologie. Germany: Wissenschaft & Praxis, Verlag, Dr. Brauner.
Steiner, John. 2011. “Gaze, Dominance, and Humiliation in the Schreber Case.” In Seeing and Being Seen, 54–72. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203806364-9.
Woods, Angela. 2011a. “Conference Report – ‘Daniel Paul Schreber Centenary – 200 Years of Sonnenstein’.” h-madness. April 26, 2011. https://historypsychiatry.com/2011/04/26/conference-report-%e2%80%9cdaniel-paul-schreber-centenary-200-years-of-sonnenstein%e2%80%9d/.

More information on this conference is available here. The full conference programme can be found here.

Woods, Angela. 2011b. “‘I Suffer in an Unknown Manner That Is Hieroglyphical’: Jung and Babette En Route to Freud and Schreber.” History of the Present 1 (2): 244–58. https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.1.2.0244.
Lothane, Zvi. 2011. “The Teachings of Honorary Professor of Psychiatry Daniel Paul Schreber, J.D., To Psychiatrists and Psychoanalysts, or Dramatology’s Challenge to Psychiatry and Psychoanalysis.” The Psychoanalytic Review 98 (6): 775–815. https://doi.org/10.1521/prev.2011.98.6.775.
Hornstein, Gail. 2018. “Free Speech.” In Agnes’s Jacket, 1st ed., 167–73. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315083728-17.
Müller, Thomas R. 2020. “Schreber, Daniel Paul.” Biographisches Archiv der Psychiatrie. 2020. https://biapsy.de/index.php/de/9-biographien-a-z/277-schreber-daniel-paul.
Brückner, Burkhart. 2016. “Animal Magnetism, Psychiatry and Subjective Experience in Nineteenth-Century Germany: Friedrich Krauß and His Nothschrei.” Medical History 60 (1): 19–36. https://doi.org/10.1017/mdh.2015.66.
Leistle, Bernhard, and Bernhard Leistle. 2017. “‘The Order of the World’: A Responsive Phenomenology of Schreber’s Memoirs.” In Anthropology and Alterity, 264–91. United Kingdom: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315616759-18.

Flechsig

Figure 2: Paul Flechsig, Schrebers first Psychiatrist

Steinberg, H., and D. Carius. 2004. “Arzt und Patient: Paul Flechsig und Daniel Paul Schreber.” Der Nervenarzt 75 (9): 933–37. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00115-004-1798-0.
Steinberg, H. 2005. “Paul Flechsig (1847–1929) — ein Hirnforscher als Psychiater.” In 200 Jahre Psychiatrie an der Universität Leipzig: Personen und Konzepte, edited by Matthias C. Angermeyer and Holger Steinberg, 81–120. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-28048-0_2.
Splett, T., and H. Steinberg. 2003. “Die Therapie der Hysterie im 19. Jahrhundert - Wie stand die deutsche Psychiatrie zur Kastration?” Fortschritte der Neurologie Psychiatrie 71 (1): 45–52. https://doi.org/10.1055/s-2003-36685.
Kittler, Friedrich A. 1984. “Flechsig/Schreber/Freud. Ein Nachrichtennetzwerk Der Jahrhundertwende.” Der Wunderblock. Zeitschrift Für Psychoanalyse 11 (12): 56–68.

TODO Weber

Schreber & the libidinal economy

Canetti, Elias. (1960) 2021. Masse und Macht. 36. Auflage. Fischer-Taschenbücher 6544. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verl.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1972. “Anti-Oedipus I, Lecture 06, 15 February 1972.” https://deleuze.cla.purdue.edu/lecture/lecture-06-10/.

The reference in the Anti-Oedipus Lecture stands out in that Deleuze explicitly connects Schreber with ’transvestites’ taking hormones (thanks @elderan for the pointer).

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1972. L’ Anti-Œdipe. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 1. Paris: Éd. de Minuit.
Hocquenghem, Guy. (1972) 1993. Homosexual Desire. Series Q. Durham: Duke University Press.
Lyotard, Jean-François. 1974. Économie Libidinale. Collection Critique. Paris: Éditions de minuit.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. 1980. “Devinir-Intense, Devinir-Animal, Devenir-Imperceptible.” In Mille plateaux. Capitalisme et schizophrénie 2. Paris: Éd. de Minuit.

Deleuze also mentions Schreber briefly in Difference and Repetition, I don’t know whether Guattari talks about Schreber in any of his solo work.

Santner, Eric L. 1996. My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Secret History of Modernity. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Chun, Wendy Hui-Kyong. 2006. Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Maia, Rousiley C. M. 1996. “Elias Canetti’s Auto-da-Fe: From the Antithesis of the Crowd Man to the Madness of Power.” Thesis Eleven, no. 45: 28–38.
Kemp, Jonathan. 2009. “Schreber and the Penetrated Male.” In Deleuze and Queer Theory, 150–67. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748634064-010.
Van der Haven, Alexander, and Iris Edelheiser. 2011. “Eine Erlöserin Mit Schnurrbart: Daniel Paul Schrebers Religiöse Offenbarungen.” Edelheiser, Iris (Hg.): Von Aposteln Bis Zionisten: Religiöse Kultur Im Leipzig Des Kaiserreichs. Marburg, 177–84. https://www.academia.edu/download/6377352/Van_der_Haven_Schreber_als_Erloeser.pdf.
Haven, Alexander van der. 2015. “„The War and Transcendental Order: A Critique of Violence in Walter Benjamin, Elias Canetti and Daniel Paul Schreber ‘.” Galili Shah. Ar (Hrsg.), Texturen Des Krieges: Körper, Schrift Und Der Erste Weltkrieg, Göttingen, 115–44.
Laqueur, Thomas W. 2015. The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400874514.
Majaca, Antonia. 2016. “Little Daniel Before the Law: Algorithmic Extimacy and the Rise of the Paranoid Apparatus.” E-Flux, September 2016. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/75/67140/little-daniel-before-the-law-algorithmic-extimacy-and-the-rise-of-the-paranoid-apparatus/.
Van der Haven, Alexander. 2017. “God as Hypothesis: Daniel Paul Schreber and the Study of Religion.” In Method and Theory in the Study of Religion: Working Papers from Hannover, 176–98. Brill. https://brill.com/downloadpdf/edcollbook/title/35021.pdf#page=186.
Rotem, Noga. 2020. “World-Craving: Rahel Varnhagen, Daniel Paul Schreber, and the Strange Promise of Paranoia.” Political Theory 48 (2): 192–217. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591719868954.
Paiella, Giorgina Samira. 2020. “Madness, Modernity, and Mechanization: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs of My Nervous Illness, the Feminized Industrial Laborer, and the Rise of Automation.” Configurations 28 (2): 255–80. https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/755040.
Adleman, Daniel. 2021. “Purloined Paranoia: The Insistence of Schreber.” Canadian Review of American Studies 51 (1): 44–62. https://doi.org/10.3138/CRAS-2019-011.
Genosko, G. 2023. “Daniel Paul Schreber as Anti-Oedipus: More Lessons from the Incipit.” In Analysis 7 (2): 100379-. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inan.2023.100379.
Roberts, Mark S. 1996. “Wired: Schreber as Machine, Technophobe, and Virtualist.” Tdr : Drama Review 40 (3): 31–46. https://doi.org/10.2307/1146545.

Schreber & the Law

Goodrich, Peter. 2015. “The Judge’s Two Bodies: The Case of Daniel Paul Schreber.” Law and Critique 26 (2): 117–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-015-9154-z.
Goodrich, P. 2016. “Miscarriages of Transmission: Body, Text, and Method.” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 48: 77–84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlp.2016.06.006.
Goodrich, Peter. 2018. Schreber’s Law: Jurisprudence and Judgment in Transition. 1st ed. Edinburgh Critical Studies in Law, Literature and the Humanities. Edinburgh: University Press.
Goodrich, Peter, and Katrin Trüstedt, eds. 2022. Laws of Transgression: The Return of Judge Schreber. Toronto ; Buffalo ; London: University of Toronto Press.

Schreber & Judaism

Geller, Jay. 1992. “The Unmanning of the Wandering Jew.” American Imago 49 (26): 227-.
Gilman, Sander L. 1993. Freud, Race, and Gender. Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv17ppchj.
Santner, Eric L. 1996. My Own Private Germany: Daniel Paul Schreber’s Secret History of Modernity. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press.
Geller, Jay. 2007. On Freud’s Jewish Body: Mitigating Circumcisions. Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823292264.
Geller, Jay. 2011. The Other Jewish Question Identifying the Jew and Making Sense of Modernity. New York, NY: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823293117.

Schreber & Literature

Wallen, Martin. 1991. “Body Linguistics in Schreber’s ‘Memoirs’ and De Quincey’s ‘Confessions’.” Mosaic (Winnipeg) 24 (2): 93–108.
Pekar, Thomas. 1994. “Das Essen und die Macht. Zum Diätdispositiv bei Daniel Paul Schreber und Franz Kafka.” Colloquia Germanica 27 (4): 333–49.
Butler, Erik. 2008. “The Schreber Case Revisited: Realpolitik and Writing in the Asylum.” New German Critique 35 (2): 171–89. https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-2008-007.
Butler, Erik. 2010. Metamorphoses of the Vampire in Literature and Film: Cultural Transformations in Europe, 1732-1933. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, New York: Camden House.
Fernie, Ewan. 2013. The Demonic: Literature and Experience. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203082300.
Pustan, Emma. 2016. “Schreber’s Memoirs: The Crisis of the Autobiographical Pact and the Ethics of Taxonomy.” Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory 2 (2): 133–43.
Conway, Joe. 2018. “Words Are for the Birds: ‘Non-reasoning Creatures Capable of Speech’ in the Writings of Schreber and Poe.” In Mocking Bird Technologies, 120–42. United States: Fordham University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823278510-007.
Bagai, Robin. 2023. “Schreber and Rena.” In Commentaries on the Work of Michael Eigen, 1st ed., 1:74–80. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003257554-12.

Trans Schreber

For our purposes, reading Schreber as trans […] isn’t a matter of rescuing an identity from the archive of historical repression and transposing it onto the present. Instead, on the one hand, it’s a matter of affirming Schreber’s assertion of the veracity of her fantasies and, on the other hand, of tracking the ways that gender and its vicissitudes are invested in by those who claim to love and/or hate us. (Smart and Warzer 2024)

The following engage with Schreber as a trans woman, or at least with Pauls transformation into a woman being related to some kind of transsexual desire.

Zagria. 2010. “Daniel Paul Schreber (1842 - 1911) Jurist, Mental Patient, Theologian.” A Gender Variance Who’s Who. May 23, 2010. https://zagria.blogspot.com/2010/05/daniel-paul-schreber-1842-1911-jurist.html.
Salah, Trish. 2018. “To Return to Schreber. Trans Literatures as Psychoanalysis.” In Current Critical Debates in the Field of Transsexual Studies: In Transition, edited by Oren Gozlan, 1st ed. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351058995.
Lavery, Grace. 2020. “Egg Theory’s Early Style.” Tsq: Transgender Studies Quarterly 7 (3): 383–98. https://doi.org/10.1215/23289252-8553034.
Gherovici, Patricia. 2022. “7 Schreber’s Grande Bellezza.” In Laws of Transgression: The Return of Judge Schreber, edited by Peter Goodrich and Katrin Trüstedt, 152–70. University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781487539818-009.
Wark, McKenzie. 2022. “Dear Cis Analysts.” Parapraxis, 2022. https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/dear-cis-analysts.
Linge, Ina. 2023. “Trans-Investiture. Writing Gender Transition in the 1890s and 1920s.” In Queer Livability: German Sexual Sciences and Life Writing. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11464019.
Lillieefranks. 2024. “Daniel Paul Schreber And the Ambiguity of Trans History.” Medium. March 19, 2024. https://medium.com/@lillieefranks/daniel-paul-schreber-and-the-ambiguity-of-trans-history-597c8e9913e7.
Prado de Oliveira, Luiz Eduardo, ed. 2024. Être Homme, Devenir Femme, 1900-2024: Les Trans et Schreber. Études Psychanalytiques. Paris: l’Harmattan.
Smart, Willa, and Beckett Warzer. 2024. “Passions and Perversions. The Symbolic Maps of Contagion.” Parapraxis, 2024. https://www.parapraxismagazine.com/articles/passions-and-perversions.

While the above are in solidarity with transsexual desire there is at least one transmisic reading of Schreber, citing Schreber as the paradigmatic case of a delusional man thinking to be a woman:

Millot, Catherine. (1983) 1990. Horsexe: Essay on Transsexuality. Translated by Kenneth Hylton. Brooklyn, N.Y: Autonomedia.

Novels

Huizing, Klaas. 2008. In Schrebers Garten: Roman. München: Knaus.
Pheby, Alex. 2015. Playthings. Norwich: Galley Beggar Press.

Companion playlist by Alex Pheby: https://www.galleybeggar.co.uk/playlist-playthings

Theater & Radio

Churchill, Caryl. 1972. Schreber’s Nervous Illness. BBC Radio 3. https://archive.org/details/caryl-churchill-schrebers-nervous-illness-1972-07-25.
Burckhardt, Martin. 1996. Die Offenbarung des Daniel Paul Schreber. Bayerischer Rundfunk. https://hoerspiele.dra.de/detailansicht/1374083.
Androsch, Peter. 1999. Schreber. Oper nach einem Libretto von Franz Kaiser. Wien: Verlag Doblinger.
Muck, Jürgen, and Jan Peter Tripp. 2015. Die Seele ist hin oder Der ewige Schreber: ein Theaterstück in drei Akten. 1. Aufl. Neue Szene, Band 4. Leipzig: Leipziger Literaturverlag.
The Trans-migration of the Body of Schreber into a Woman. 2017. Jefferson Market Library, NY. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cx0QTyxKTcM.

Art & Music

Stecker, Heidi. 2007. “Zeitgenössische Kunst: Kippenberger und die Schrebers.” Deutsches Ärzteblatt 104 (20). https://www.aerzteblatt.de/int/article.asp?id=55727.

EL PALOMAR: Schreber is a Woman

Video Installation by EL PALOMAR (http://elpalomar.sexy/). They have a making of video on vimeo:

One bed for Schreber / how was Schreber is a Woman done from El Palomar on Vimeo.

The soundtrack is also available as an album. (it’s great!)

https://el-palomar.bandcamp.com/album/schreber-is-a-woman

Crowmeat Bob

Mostly name drops in ensemble names but passes the vibes check so included!

https://crowmeatbob.bandcamp.com/

Judge Schrebers Avian Choir

Judge Schreber and Her Magic Band

https://crowmeatbob.bandcamp.com/album/big-ears-2022

Exhibitions

Leipzig

The Saxonian Museum of Psychiatry in Leipzig has an exhibition related to Paul Schreber https://www.psychiatriemuseum.de/ausstellung.html

Pong Wars | Compiling C to WASM

hi (hji) — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Look at my procrastination project! @vnglst’s Mastodon Post and Javascript Version inspired me to try my hand at implementing Pong Wars in C using raylib. I also wanted to test compiling C/Raylib to HTML5. With a little help from raylibs documentation, it worked so well I don’t even know what to write about it here, you can see the result below.

Press R to reset and P to Pause.

Code is available on git.repetitions.de.

On the Publication History of Durée et Simultanéité

hi (hji) — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0200

In the German translation of Deleuze’s Bergsonism there’s a translators note, pointing out that Bergson supposedly did not want Durée et Simultanéité republished and even put that restriction into his will:

Einem späteren Nachdruck von Durée et Simultanéité (1922) hat Bergson nicht zugestimmt und diesen auch testamentarisch untersagt; der Text wurde erst 30 Jahre nach Bergsons Tod wieder zugänglich gemacht. Vgl. Henri Bergson, Mélanges, hg. von A. Robinet, Paris 1972. (Deleuze 2007, 56)

Bergson did not agree to a later reprint of Durée et Simultanéité (1922) and prohibted it in his will as well; only 30 years after Bergsons death the text was made available again. See Henri Bergson, Mélanges, ed. A. Robinet, Paris 1972. (my Translation)

The note is attached to a passage in which Deleuze himself comments on Bergson supposedly renouncing the book. But unlike Deleuze Weinmann gives us a concrete reference.

Weinmann refers to the 1972 Collection Mélanges (Bergson 1972), which collected besides Duration and Simultaneity, Bergsons latin dissertation on Aristotles’ concept of place and Écrits et Paroles. In his Avant-Propos¹ Henri Gouhier writes that Duration and Simultaneity was excluded from an earlier collection of Bergsons works published in 1959 (probably Bergson 1959b). The reason given then was a letter from Édouard Le Roy to Rose-Marie Mossé-Bastide, who published this letter as a preface to Écrits et Paroles (Bergson 1957, 1959a). In it, Le Roy claimed that Bergson had forbidden to republish Durée et Simultanéité. Yet, Gouhier notes, this claim could not be substantiated by any evidence. Bergson had indeed left detailed instructions, banning previously unpublished manuscripts and letters from being published posthumously but left no such instructions for Duration and Simultaneity and so its seventh edition had already been published in 1968 with an avertissement signed by Jean Wahl, Henri Gouhier, Jean Guitton and Vladimir Jankélévitch, which is also reproduced as part of the preface to Mélanges.

Weinmann’s note is not only unsubstantiated, it also cites a source that says the opposite of what he claims. Though it’s worth noting that the 1959 Édition du Centenaire was, like Mélanges in 1972, edited by André Robinet and provided with a preface by Henri Gouhier. It’s not unlikely that Weinmann either mixed up his references or wanted to cite the newer collection that actually included Duration and Simulataneity without actually reading the preface with the justification of the publication.

As for Deleuze’s own comment to which Weinmann’s note is attached, it’s clear that Deleuze too is referencing Le Roy’s letter:

Bergson’s renunciation and condemnation of this book is perhaps due to the fact that he did not feel able to pursue the mathematical implications of a theory of multiplicities. (Deleuze 1991, 39)

though as Le Bergsonisme was published in 1968, written before the 7th edition of Durée et Simultanéité 1968 was published, Deleuze didn’t have reason to doubt Le Roy.

On a related note, Jimena Canales comments on Le Roy’s claim in her excellent Book The Physicist and the Philosopher, though she claims on her part that it was Le Roy himself who published Bergsons Work in the 1950s:

In the 1950s Le Roy compiled Bergson’s collected works. He decided not to include Duration and Simultaneity in the collection, leaving the impression in the eyes of many that Bergson himself did not endorse the book. But that was hardly the case. Bergson never recanted a single word he had written or said about Einstein’s theory of relativity. (Canales 2015, 61)

I’m not sure which collection she refers to here, Le Roy died in 1954 and the Collections I’m aware of were published after his death in 1957 and 1959 (Bergson 1959a, 1959b), he might have been involved with the editorial of those before his death but I was not able to verify that beyond his letter to Mossé-Bastide. From Gouhiers account, it also seems to me that Le Roy had a much more active interest in preventing the republication of the Book than Canales implies here.

In any case it might be interesting to follow up on Le Roys reasons for trying to bury Duration and Simultaneity with Bergson.

References

Bergson, Henri. 1957. Écrits et Paroles. Edited by Rose-Marie Mossé-Bastide. Vol. 1. 2 vols. Paris: Alcan.

———. 1959a. Écrits et Paroles. Edited by Rose-Marie Mossé-Bastide. Vol. 2. 2 vols. Paris: Alcan.

———. 1959b. Œuvres. Edited by André Robinet. Édition du centenaire. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

———. 1968. Durée et Simultanéité. À Propos de La Théorie d’Einstein. 7ᵉ édition. Bibliothèque de Philosophie Contemporaine. Paris: PUF.

———. 1972. Mélanges. Edited by André Robinet. Paris: Presses universitaires de France.

Canales, Jimena. 2015. The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson, and the Debate That Changed Our Understanding of Time. Princeton Oxford: Princeton Univers. Press.

Deleuze, Gilles. 1991. Bergsonism. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. Reissue Edition. New York: Zone Books.

———. 2007. Henri Bergson Zur Einführung. Translated by Martin Weinmann. 4th ed. Hamburg: Junius.

Here is the entire relevant section of Gouhiers Preface (in French):

Dans le recueil publié en 1959, on lisait,p. 1574, àpropos de Durée et Simultanéité: «Cet ouvrage de Bergson ne figure pas dans les presentes Œuvres pour les raisons indiquées par E. Le Roy, Lettre-Préface à Écrits et Paroles, t. I, p. VII-VIII.» Or, toutes les recherches entreprises pour connaitre l’origine de ces raisons ont abomeme dans le tèmoignage d’Edouard Le Roy, rien n’incline à supposer qu’il renonçait définitivement à toute publication future. C’est pourquoi, en 1968, l’ouvrage a été réimprimé avec cet Avertissement pour la septième édition:

Dans la lettre du 29 septembre 1953 à Mme Rose-Marie Mossé-Bastide, qui sert de préface au recueil Ecrits et paroles, Edouard Le Roy écrivait : « Il est clair que nous devons respecter l’interdiction de Bergson quant à la publication d’inédits; mais ne rentrent pas dans ce cas les textes qu’il a publiés lui-même. A cet régard, la question de la relativité soulève une difficulté: je pense toujours que la solution s’en trouve dans les remarques concernant la double notion du réel. Je répondrais volontiers à Einstein que lui-même ne comprend pas bien la position de Bergson. Mais il faut connaitre entièrement celle-ci; j’en ai longuement causé avec Bergson, il n’a pas fait d’objection à ma remarque, mais il a ajouté avec insistance que le défaut de ses connaissances mathématiques ne lui permettait pas de suivre avec le détail nécessaire le développement de la relativité généralisée et qu’en conséquence il estimait plus sage, pour sa part, de laisser tomber la question. De là son refus de laisser réimprimet Durée et simultanéité.»

Rappelons les faits. En 1922, Bergson publie à la Librairie Félix Alcan Durée et simultanéité (A propos de la théorie d’Einstein). Le 6 avril 1922, Bergson rencontre Einstein à la séance de la Société française de Philosophie (Bull. Soc.fr. Phil., juillet 1922, Ecrits et Paroles, III, pp. 497 et sq.). L’annee suivante parait une deuxième édition du livre avec un nouvel Avant-Propos et trois Appendices; l’un de ces Appendices était une réponse à des observations du physicien Jean Becquerel parues dans le Bulletin scientifique des Étudiants de Paris de mars 1923 et dans son introduction à l’ouvrage d’André Metz sur Ea Relativité. En 1924, Bergson envoie à la Revue de philosophie une Eettre sur les temps fictifs et les temps réels, en réponse à un article d’André Metz; une Réplique de M. André Metz provoque une seconde lettre du philosophe. Ces discussions n’empechent pas ce dernier de réimprimer son livre sans changement: une sixième édition parait en 1931. La décision de «laisser tomber la question» serait donc postérieure à cette date.

Ceci dit, quelle est la portée exacte du «refus» dont parlait Edouard Le Roy? Préférer, dans certaines circonstances, ne pas réimprimer un livre est une chose; interdite sa réimpression en est une autre: rien ne permet de penser que Bergson ait même envisagé la seconde.

Dans son testament du 8 février 1937, Bergson formule de façon très précise les interdictions concernant ses manuscrits et ses lettres: s’il avait eu l’intention d’interdire la réédition de Durée et simultanéité, comment ne l’aurait-il pas dit? Or on ne trouve aucune allusion à cet ouvrage ni dans le texte du testament, ni dans les codicilles. Bien plus, dans La Pensée et le Mouvant, une très longue note expose, une fois encore, la pensée de Bergson sur la relativité; elle appartient aux pages ajoutées par l’auteur au texte de 1922, sans doute en 1933, et publiées l’année suivante. Or, sans le moindre embarras, le philosophe écrit: « Nous avons jadis consacré un livre à la démonstration de ces différents points. Nous ne pouvons le résumer dans une simple note. Mais, comme le livre a souvent été mal compris, nous croyons devoir reproduire ici le passage essentiel d’un article où nous donnions la raison de cette incompréhension… » Suit une explication tirée de la réponse à M. André Metz (Edition du Centenaire, p. 1280, n. 1). Dans ces conditions, on ne voit pas pourquoi le public resterait plus longtemps privé d’un texte aussi important, dont l’intérêt philosophique et historique est tout à fait indépendant des discussions proprement scientifiques et techniques qu’il a pu provoquer¹.

¹: Avertissement signé : Jean Wahl, Henri Gouhier, Jean Guitton, Vladimir Jankélévitch.

Bergson 1972 X-XII.

↩︎

Bergson on Substance (in the Creative Mind)

hi (hji) — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0200

Bergson is criticising Metaphysics thus far for thinking “they are telling us something about the absolute by giving it a name.” (Bergson 2007a 49)

The name varies between Philosophers and traditions but in the end all these different names “become synonyms of “being” and consequently synonyms of each other.” (Bergson 2007a 49)

Now we need to understand why Bergson thinks this is a problem, so let’s look at this bit:

no matter what name you give to the “thing itself,” whether you make of it the Substance of Spinoza, the Ego of Fichte, the Absolute of Schelling, the Idea of Hegel, or the Will of Schopenhauer, it will be useless for the word to present itself with its well-defined signification: it will lose it; it will be emptied of all meaning from the moment it is applied to the totality of things. (Bergson 2007a 49)

Here we get a bit more: by simply giving a name to being and tying everything back to it they eliminate difference, which in turn eliminates the signification of the concept they’re trying to get at

But the concept thus arrived at with its undetermined content, or rather lack of content, the concept which is no longer anything at all, we insist that it be everything. (Bergson 2007a 50)

This is the crucial point: 1. The concept of being is empty 2. precisely because it’s aim is to eliminate difference, the heterogeneity of things.

So against the proposition of being Bergson proposes that

The truth is that an existence can be given only in an experience. This experience will be called vision or contact, exterior perception in general, if it is a question of a material object; it will take the name of intuition when it has to do with the mind.

Note that here he is talking not about existence in general but an existence, the existance of a thing. When he first brings up the critique of “Substance, Ego, Idea, Will” as singular unifying concepts he follows it up with saying that

[Philosophy] would not begin by defining or describing the systematic unity of the world: who knows if the world is actually one? Experience alone can say, and unity, if it exists, will appear at the end of the search as a result; it is impossible to posit it at the start as a principle. (Bergson 2007a 30)

Now we have the starting point for Bergsons philosophy, not an assumption of systematic unity of the world, but empirical heterogeneity. It is through experience that we get to change, since Bergsons analysis of experience insists that first intuition, then perception are fundamentally constituted by movement or change. States or things become secondary to change, they’re cuts, practical abstractions, through the analysis of the indivisibility of change (in MMch3 and CM:*The Perception of Change*) he comes to the conclusion that

There are changes, but there are underneath the change no things which change: change has no need of a support. There are movements, but there is no inert or invariable object which moves: movement does not imply a mobile. (Bergson 2007b 157) […] But the whole mechanism of our perception of things, like the mechanism of our action upon things has been regulated in such a way as to bring about, between the external and the internal mobility, a situation comparable to that of our two trains,—more complicated, perhaps, but of the same kind: when the two changes, that of the object and that of the subject, take place under particular conditions, they produce the particular appearance that we call a “state.” (Bergson 2007b 157)

This notion of change as substance, resolves in Bergsons view a lot, if not all problems he sees with the notions of substance of the “Moderns” (Bergson 2007b 167) he criticized before. Notably substance no longer receeds “little by little to the regions of the unknowable” since it is present in experience, since we found it in experience. Substance being unknowable is for Bergson an effect of the privileging of being we started with. Because by starting with the assumption of the existence of things, metaphysics has a hard time to deal with change, it has to conceive it as “multiplicity of states replacing other states” the idea of things-in-itself, by whatever name it goes, serves the purpose of connecting these states, providing an immobile substratum. But because all we find in experience is change, this immobile substratum, existence given a name, eludes us.

Let us, on the contrary, endeavor to perceive change as it is in its natural indivisibility: we see that it is the very substance of things, and neither does movement appear to us any longer under the vanishing form which rendered it elusive to thought, nor substance with the immutability which made it inaccessible to our experience. Radical instability and absolute immutability are therefore mere abstract views taken from outside of the continuity of real change, abstractions which the mind then hypostasizes into multiple states on the one hand, into thing or substance on the other. (Bergson 2007b 167)

So the difference between Bergsons metaphysics and the metaphysics he criticizes is that he does not start with the idea of being, eliminating difference, but starts with the experience of change, which is difference.

References

Bergson, Henri. 2007a. “Stating the Problems.” In The Creative Mind, translated by Mabelle L. Andison. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

———. 2007b. “The Perception of Change.” In The Creative Mind, translated by Mabelle L. Andison. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications.

Test Post

hi (hji) — Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

this is a post in which i’ll ~~try~~ ~~out~~ all kinds of stuff relating to hugo

Aliquam erat volutpat. Nunc eleifend leo vitae magna. In id erat non orci commodo lobortis. Proin neque massa, cursus ut, gravida ut, lobortis eget, lacus. Sed diam. Praesent fermentum tempor tellus. Nullam tempus. Mauris ac felis vel velit tristique imperdiet. Donec at pede. Etiam vel neque nec dui dignissim bibendum. Vivamus id enim. Phasellus neque orci, porta a, aliquet quis, semper a, massa. Phasellus purus. Pellentesque tristique imperdiet tortor. Nam euismod tellus id erat.

1(defun test (str)
2  (declare ignore str)
3  (print "Hello World"))
4
5(defun ich-bin-neu ())

let’s also add a heading

It’s kinda impotant to know how those work. but what about citations? (Bergson 2019)

embedding stuff

(and also subheadings. note that this style doesn’t seem to distinguish between levels of subheadings.)

toots

Embedding toots is implemented via a custom shortcode

and more!

as I’m writing this in org mode and export with ox-hugo 5* subehadeings become lists.

here’s a table

first	second	third
test	test2	test3
test4

and a slightly different one

key	value
1	2

lists

we’ve already seen that lists can be created with org header but org also has support for lists so how are those handled?

test 1

first
try
with

test 2

second
try
with +

test 3

numbered
lists
are
cool

Let’s

also try some code snippets of a language where syntax highlighting probably works

 1#!/bin/bash
 2
 3# This script takes on Argument, checks whether that Argument is an existing
 4# file ending in .pdf and if both conditions are met, rids it of any annotations
 5# saving a copy of the original file with _(clean) atteached to the name.
 6
 7if [ -f "$1" ]; then
 8    if [ ${1: -4} == ".pdf" ]; then
 9        filename="${1/.pdf/_clean.pdf}"
10        pdftk "$1" output uncompressed.pdf uncompress
11        LANG=C sed -n '/^\/Annots/!p' uncompressed.pdf > stripped.pdf
12        pdftk stripped.pdf output "$filename" compress
13        rm uncompressed.pdf
14        rm stripped.pdf
15        echo Done!
16    else
17        echo "$1" is not a pdf
18        exit 1
19    fi
20else
21    echo "$1" does not exist
22    exit 1
23fi

Bergson, Henri. 2019. L’idée de temps: cours au Collège de France, 1901-1902. Paris: Puf.