The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic MindIn the formative years of psychiatry Freud, Bleuler, and Jaspers all studied Daniel Paul Schreber's Memoirs of My Nervous Illness as a model of psychotic thought. Sass provides a nuanced interpretation of Schreber's Memoirs in the context of Wittgenstein's analysis of philosophical solipsism. A dauntless critic of the illusions of philosophy, Wittgenstein likened the speculative excesses of traditional metaphysics to mental illness. Sass observes that many of the "intellectual diseases" that Wittgenstein discerned - diseases involving detachment from social existence and practical concerns, and exaggerated processes of abstraction and self-consciousness - have striking affinities with the symptoms of schizophrenia. Like the philosophical solipsist, the schizophrenic may define his or her own consciousness as the center of the universe - and may experience his or her delusional world as a product of that same consciousness. |
Contents
A Minds Eye World | 17 |
Enslaved Sovereign Observed Spectator | 51 |
A Vast Museum of Strangeness | 86 |
Other editions - View all
The Paradoxes of Delusion: Wittgenstein, Schreber, and the Schizophrenic Mind Louis Arnorsson Sass No preview available - 1994 |
Common terms and phrases
actual aspects attitude awareness believed called characteristic conception consciousness constituting contradictions Daniel Paul Schreber delu delusional world delusions Dementia Praecox ence epistemological Eugen Bleuler everything example existence experienced experiential expression external fact fantasy feeling felt feminine Foucault Freud G. E. M. Anscombe G. H. von Wright hallucinations human illusion images imply inner interpretation involve Jaspers Karl Jaspers kind lived-world Ludwig Wittgenstein Madness and Modernism Memoirs mental mind mind's eye miracles mood mute particularity nature nerves normal object one's orig P. M. S. Hacker paradoxical paranoid passage passive perception person phantom concreteness phenomenological Philip Rieff philosophical phrenic poor reality-testing Psychiatry psychoanalytic Psychology Psychopathology psychosis psychotic quasi-solipsism quasi-solipsistic R. D. Laing rays reality Sass schizo schizoid schizophrenic patients Schre Schreber describes seeing-as seems sense sion solipsism solipsistic staring subjectivization symptoms things thought tion Titchener trans uncanny University Press Wittgen Wittgenstein York
References to this book
Who is the Dreamer who Dreams the Dream?: A Study of Psychic Presences James S. Grotstein No preview available - 2000 |
Voices of Reason, Voices of Insanity: Studies of Verbal Hallucinations Ivan Leudar,Philip Thomas No preview available - 2006 |