in his book is the dangerous combination between humanity and God within the mind of Schreber. Schreber's ruminations can be schematized in this way: God - Upper and lower (Ormuzd and Ahriman respectively, derived from Persian theology) The "forecourts of Heaven" - The "states of Blessedness" where deceased humans' souls reside after a process of "purification" (These are called the "anterior realms of God" in contradistinction to the "posterior" realms which consist of the upper and lower Gods) The Universe - Separated from the transcendental sphere of God providing the human/material world and yet threatening God's invested existence within it; celestial bodies allow the means for God's life/light to interact with His creations Divine rays - Semi-sentient entities (which are the cosmic fuel of God's Omnipotence, and influence Schreber and the world but can be manipulated by Flechsig) Nerves/Souls - The spiritual bodies of humans which are active whether the living person is alive or dead, and go through various states of purification in order to return to God's nerves in a "state of Blessedness" There is no Hell in Schreber's cosmology. Freud's interpretation and its criticisms Although Freud never interviewed Schreber himself, he read his Memoirs and drew his own conclusions from it in an essay entitled "Psycho-Analytic Notes on an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia (Dementia Paranoides)" (1911). Freud thought that Schreber's disturbances resulted from repressed homosexual desires, which in infancy were oriented at his father and brother. Repressed inner drives were projected onto the outside world and led to intense hallucinations which were first centred on his physician Dr. Flechsig (projection of his feelings towards his brother), and then around God (who represented Schreber's father, Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber). During the first phase of his illness Schreber was certain that Dr. Flechsig persecuted him and made direct attempts to murder his soul and change him into a woman (he had what Freud thought to be emasculation hallucinations, which were in fact, according to Schreber's words an "unmanning" (Entmannung) experience. In the next period of his ailment he was convinced that God and the order of things demanded of him that he must be turned into a woman so that he could be the sole object of sexual desire of God. Consideration of the Schreber case led Freud to revise received classification of mental disturbances. He argued that the difference between paranoia and dementia praecox is