In 1884, the distinguished German jurist Daniel Paul Schreber suffered the firs
t of a series of mental collapses that would afflict him for the rest of his lif
e. In his madness, the world was revealed to him as an enormous architecture of
nerves, dominated by a predatory God. It became clear to Schreber that his perso
nal crisis was implicated in what he called a "crisis in God's realm," one that
had transformed the rest of humanity into a race of fantasms. There was only one
remedy; as his doctor noted: Schreber "considered himself chosen to redeem the
world, and to restore to it the lost state of Blessedness. This, however, he cou
ld only do by first being transformed from a man into a woman...."
