Minor Case of Judge Schreber

Judge Daniel Paul Schreber, at once an author and object of one of the most famous cases of psychosis, is a recurring figure throughout "Anti-Oedipus" and the protagonist of its opening scene. In Deleuzian scholarship, Schreber has been often discussed as a paradigm of the schizo and celebrated as a revolutionary figure of anti-Oedipal emancipation that stands in contrast to the paranoiac to which Freud’s analysis had reduced him. Although Deleuze and Guattari’s reflections on Schreber’s "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" add to the existing literature on the possible diagnostic interpretations of Schreber’s delirium that challenge reductive, Oedipalized readings of his case, the article offers a close reading of the passages in which Schreber enters Anti-Oedipus and it suggests a different function he has within Deleuze and Guattari’s project with implications for both the psychoanalytic clinic and legal field. Schreber's book and life are indeed examples of a casuistique, singular, and "baroque" mode of thought.