Thomas Dalzell investigates what was distinctive about the predisposition to psychosis which Freud posited in Daniel Paul Schreber, a presiding judge in Saxony's highest court.

He argues that Freud's Schreber text reversed the order of priority in late 19th century conceptions of the disposing causes of psychosis--the objective-biological and subjective-biographical--to privilege subjective disposition to psychosis, but without returning to the paradigms of early 19th century Romantic psychiatry and without obviating hereditary disposition.

The book takes the psychotic...