Providentia

The Rumour Watchers (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part 1

Through a weekly column published in the Boston Herald, Robert Knapp and the other staff members at the Boston Rumor Clinic would tackle various prominent rumors for in-depth analysis and refute them based on available information.   The rumor would be given in italics and followed by the FACT section (in bold-type) to set the record straight.   The column often included essays on the psychology underlying why these rumors were so popular.   Readers of the column often sent in suggestions for new rumors to be debunked though no anonymous suggestions would be accepted.   Everyone who wanted to have a rumor investigated had to agree to have their name posted in the paper.   

The column became highly successful with more rumor suggestions than Knapp and the others were able to handle.    Naturally enough, most of the rumors that were submitted related to the war effort including allegations of corruption, abuse of soldiers, and stories of impending victory or defeat.    There were also more implausible rumors, including many stories that we would label "urban legends" today.   Still, the war-related rumors were considered important enough for Knapp and Alport to appoint "morale wardens" to report sensitive rumors to the Massachusetts Committee for Public Safety. 

The wardens were also put in charge of distributing pamphlets and posters, complete reports on how the rumours spread and, generally, do whatever they could to "check the spread of Axis-inspired rumours."    As Knapp himself stated in the orientation letter he prepared for new moral wardens:  "The morale warden is not a spy or a police officer. His job  is to report facts relating to public opinion, rumor, and propaganda.”   The wardens were also charged with distributing the Boston Herald column to bulletin boards across the city as well as gather new rumours as they heard them.   As the Boston Herald issued a plea to its readers to "join in the war on Axis rumors," more volunteers agreed to become wardens and as many as three hundred were eventually recruited.

And the Rumor Clinic was hardly limited to Boston.  Through articles about the Boston Clinic in Reader's Digest and American Mercury, Knapp told readers to:

Send in your rumors! What wild, damaging, morale-eroding stories similar to those described in this article are current in your community? Readers who wish to help the Boston Rumor Clinic, and further the organization of similar clinics throughout the country, are urged to put such stories in writing and send them to Robert H. Knapp.

The Clinic received hundreds of letters in response and information on over one thousand rumors.  Knapp and Allport also got requests for help in setting up Rumor Clinics in other cities.   By October 1942, clinics had been set up in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York City, Long Island, Syracuse, New Jersey, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Chicago, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Missouri, Montreal, Oregon, and Washington.   Along with clinics set up by social scientists, there were clinics set up by women's groups, high school students, and university clubs.  It quickly became a popular way for civilians to get involved in the war effort.

Except, of course, for the fact that the U.S. government was still supposed to be the ones running the Rumor Project as originally planned.   The Office of Wartime Information (OWI) was formally established in 1942 with the mandate of overseeing all wartime information circulated in the United States.  That the Boston Rumor Clinic and the various spinoff clinics it had inspired were already working on the rumor control that the OWI was supposed to be dealing with exclusively led to major bureaucratic conflicts.   It likely didn't help that the OWI had a radically different slant on how rumors could be dealt with.   Instead of operating clinics, the OWI field staff conducted nationwide surveys of war-related rumors ising "rumor conscious" volunteers from across the country.   These volunteers were selected based on their relative standing in their local communities and how well they interacted with the public.   Dentists, barbers, journalists, and other volunteers gathered the rumors which were then analysed by the OWI. 

More than 3000 rumors were collected by the  OWI and, at least in the early stages, social scientists such as Robert Knapp and Gordon Allport acted as consultants.  While relations between the OWI and the Boston Rumor Clinic started off amicably enough,  things went downhill after Allport criticized a confidential OWI report on wartime rumors that was released in October, 1942.   Allport likely had good reason to be critical since the report specifically attacked local rumor clinics and argued that rumor control should be carried out by the OWI.   

Since Allport ended his critical letter with a set of recommendations calling for a more decentralized approach to rumor control, his suggestions were largely ignored by the OWI.   While relations between the Boston Clinic and the OWI stayed cordial (at least on the surface), a power struggle quickly developed.   The OWI had no interest in allowing social scientists to have the control that the Rumor Clinics gave them.   Despite the expanded role of social scientists in the government during wartime, OWI felt that Allport and Knapp were ivory tower academics who had no business operating a clinic without government approval. 

All of which then led to an active government campaign to put the existing rumor clinics out of business.   Since many of these clinics depended on the OWI for guidance and financial support,  a formal statement titled "Rumor in Wartime" was deliberately worded to criticize the rumor clinic concept.  Focusing specifically on the Boston Clinic, the report accused rumor clinics of ignoring the underlying factors that led to rumors being spread.   It ended by insisting that all rumor clinics by placed under government control since, "A large number of independent groups all scouting for the prevailing rumors and developing their own programs of counteraction would probably do more harm than good.”   

The OWI then issued a set of guidelines that rumor clinics would need to follow to get funding from the federal government.  The guidelines were included in a manual issued in October, 1942 that described how a rumor clinic should be run (or, more to the point, how it shouldn’t be run).   Community groups writing to the OWI asking how they could set up their own rumor clinics were sent an elaborate questionnaire that was largely intended to discourage the new clinics as much as possible.   Any group that actually succeeded in completing the questionnaire was then sent a “rumor bible” describing the recommended organizational structure for the clinic.   Not only was each clinic required to have a “project director”, but also a “research director”, an “educational director”, analytical assistants, field reporters, a general advisory council, etc.  Few community groups had the time or energy to try to meet these bizarre requirements.   Examination of the OWI’s rumor file after the war showed no indication that any of their questionnaires were ever completed.   Their bureaucratic stonewalling tactic had worked beautifully in preventing the established of new rumor clinics.

Along with discouraging new clinics, the OWI also discouraged the existing clinics by burying them in red tape (something that bureaucrats excelled in).   Specific procedures for dealing with rumors were included in the “bible” as well as guidelines regarding which rumors to ignore and which could be safely dealt with in the clinic.   The “bible” also targeted the procedures set up by the Boston Clinic and used examples from the Clinic’s Boston Herald column to demonstrate the various “mistakes” that were being made by the Boston group. 

Allport and Knapp responded to this not-so-veiled attack on their Clinic by issuing their own guidelines for existing rumor clinics to follow.  Though much simpler than the byzantine rules laid down by the OWI, the Boston Clinic simply didn’t have the nationwide reach that the OWI did.   In a 1943 New York Times story, the OWI flatly condemned the rumor clinics and suggested that “the rumor spiking department of the war information agency lives in constant dread that some of the [clinics] are going to make a rumor worse by printing it and denying it in the wrong manner.”   With the negative feedback from the OWI and the general decline of public interest in the scientific study of rumor, the rumor clinics themselves went into a slow decline.   Not only did fewer rumors get reported to the clinics, but newspaper editors quietly shelved the rumor columns in the papers and moved on to other news stories.   By the end of the war, no clinics were left operating although Allport and Knapp continued their own research on rumours.

 So, which approach was more effective in dealing with wartime rumors, the top-down approach championed by the OWI or the bottom-up approach of the Boston Rumor Clinic?    It was Gordon Allport who had the last word in a 1947 book he co-wrote with L. Postman.   In that book, he suggested that the OWI was more concerned with rumors being deliberately spread by “Fifth-Columnists” intended to destabilize the nation’s war effort (though the actual evidence of this was limited).   As for the Boston Rumor Clinics and the other clinics modeled after it, they focused more on local rumors and how they affected civilian morale.   

They also had radically different strategies for dealing with these rumors.   As Allport and Portman pointed out: 

The OWI’s philosophy held that to smother a rumor with facts is better than to single it out for disproof, lest in the process it become unduly advertised. The rumor clinic philosophy leaned in the opposite direction. People won’t see the relevance of facts unless it is pointed out to them. Name the rumor and pound it hard was the policy.

 Regardless of the value of the different approaches used by the OWI and the Boston Rumor Clinic, what happened during World War 2 highlights the danger often faced by social scientists who find themselves in conflict with government bureaucrats.    Though Allport and Knapp were primarily academic researchers, getting the federal government to give them the kind of freedom that they took for granted in academia proved to be next to impossible.  

 Though on the same side as far as the greater war effort was concerned, their differing visions about how  social psychology could be used to boost morale and defuse damaging rumors helped scuttle what might otherwise have been a fruitful collaboration between academia and government.   In many ways, the conflict between the OWI and the Boston Rumor Clinic reflects the problems faced by many government scientists, both in and out of wartime.  

 That science and bureaucratic micromanagement are often in conflict is a lesson that is still being painfully learned even today.

 

 

 

 

Does Envy Lead to Victimizing Top Performers?

Drawing from victim precipitation, social comparison, and identity theories, a recent study in the Journal of Applied Psychology develops and tests an integrative model of the victimization of high-performing employees. The researchers examine envy as an explanatory mechanism of the victimization of high performers from fellow group members and propose work group identification as a moderator of this envy mechanism. Study 1, in a sample of 4,874 university staff employees in 339 work groups, supports the proposition that high performers are more likely to be targets of victimization. In Study 2, multisource data collected at 2 time points (217 employees in 67 work groups in 3 organizations), supports the proposition that high performers are more likely to be targets of victimization because of fellow group members’ envy, and work group identification mitigates the mediated relationship.

For the abstract

These Clues Help Identify a Mentally Ill 'Lone Gunman' Before Tragedy Strikes

Following any act of terrorism by a single individual, whether it involves bombings, shootings, or other form of violence, there are always questions that are asked afterward. These questions include whether the offender was acting alone or belonged to a larger group, whether mental illness was involved, or what could have driven someone to do such a terrible thing. Since many offenders are either killed by police or commit suicide to avoid capture, these questions often go unanswered.

While mental health professionals have argued for the existence of a "terrorist personality" or that people who belonged to larger terrorist organizations were either brainwashed or psychopaths, research looking at captured members of known terrorist groups has not shown this to be the case. Terrorist organizations typically recruit people who are intelligent and psychologically healthy since they can carry out tasks required of them and work in secret.

To read more, check out my new contribution to the Huffington Post.

Fighting Poverty with Cash

The steady proliferation of charity groups and humanitarian organization has (more or less) reduced poverty in many parts of the world.   Still, it is no secret that a large percentage of the money collected to battle poverty actually goes towards supporting the infrastructure of these various organizations.   How much of the money collected actually ends up in the hands of the people who are supposed  to be helped can vary depending on the organization    As well, there is often a patriarchal "we know best" attitude over who receives the aid and how that aid is to be used in fighting poverty.  

Many donors often need to check carefully into the background and mission statement of each charity group to decide if that charity is consistent with their own philosophy of giving.   Questions often arise over how sustainable the charitable help is going to be.  There is also the perpetual problem of bribery in many parts of the world with charitable organizations often needing to "pay off" corrupt government officials to be allowed to distribute aid at all.

But what if there were a more direct way of giving?   Instead of relying on an infrastructure of experts and charity directors, what if the money simply went to the people who needed it?   This is the central concept behind GiveDirectly.   Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts by graduate students completing economics development degrees at Harvard and MIT, GiveDirectly was made possible by the exploding use of mobile banking in developing countries. 

Through services such as Pingit, people with smartphones can send and receive money directly.  Due to the lack of the pre-existing infrastructure found in Western nations, most developing nations have completely bypassed the need for landlines by leapfrogging directly towards wireless telephony.   Cellular telephones are a common sight in poor countries and have allowed communities to stay in contact using solar technology and other innovations that are largely unthinkable in Western nations.

This has also allowed the rise of wireless banking for the masses.   As one example, the National Payments Corporation of India has developed the Interbank Mobile Payment Service to provide round-the-clock financial services for all of India's major banks.  This allows person-to-person mobile banking on all mobile phones including merchant payments, bill payments, and cash-on-delivery.  Services such as this throughout the developing world have also enabled organizations such as GiveDirectly to bypass conventional charity groups to provide direct aid to people in need.

Through direct donations to GiveDirectly's web page, poor households in Kenya and Uganda can receive aid directly with only a small percentage of donations being used for infrastructure.  With more than 90 percent of money donated to GiveDirectly being transferred electronically to people in need, recipients are then allowed to decide for themselves how the money is to be spent.  According to independent charity evaluator GiveWell, GiveDirectly is currently rated as one of their most highly recommended charities with the one-off grants reaching the desired households with no evidence of corruption or inefficiency in the process.    While there are some cases of discord between recipients and non-recipients, the GiveDirectly program does seemto have a good track record for providing direct aid to people in need.

According to a review of GiveDirectly published by GiveWell last November, a number of the key strengths of the GiveDirectly program include:

• Its focus on a program with a low burden of proof and a strong track record.
•  A strong and evolving process for ensuring that cash is well-targeted and consistently reaches intended targets (more), and documented success in transferring a high portion of funds raised directly to recipients.
• Standout transparency and commitment to self-evaluation.
• Room for further expansion in providing funding

The GiveWell report does note some concerns, including the fact that GiveDirectly has only been in operation for a few years and that the organization's leaders are all unpaid part-timers.  While that speaks well of their dedication, it is open to question how long the charity can continue in its present form.  

Still, based on the GiveWell report, GiveDirectly has received further funding which will allow them to expand operations and deliver more aid than before.    Media coverage has been generally positive to date though some critics have argued that it  may promote a "dependence mentality" in people receiving aid.   As well, there are still questions about potential tension between people receiving aid and those who don't that need to be answered before programs like GiveDirectly can receive wholehearted support.

Despite these concerns, it should be interested to see where GiveDirectly, and providing direct aid through mobile banking, will go over the next few years.   Will it transform how we donate money to developing nations?  Or will it become just another giving fad?   

Time will tell.

The GiveDirectly blog.

 

 

 

Why Do We Pay It Forward?

In 2007, the alternative rock band Radiohead released their seventh studio album, In Rainbows.   Although the band announced that their new album would soon be available in CD form, they also implemented what must have seemed like an extremely risky strategy.   Fans who didn't feel like waiting for the CD had the option of downloading the album directly from the Radiohead website in the form of a DRM-free ZIP file. Fans also had the option of ordering a CD version self-published by the band. No minimum price was set and people wanting the album were simply instructed to pay whatever they wanted.

Beginning on October 10, 2007 and continuing until December 10 when the download option was terminated, In Rainbows became one of the most successful albums in the band's history and the Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing scheme also became part of rock legend.  Though PWYW had been around for decades, it was the Radiohead release that showed how successful it could be. Since that fateful release in 2007, PWYW has been adopted by other independent musicians and has even by used by restaurants, movie theatres, and digital distributors.  

To read more, check out my new Psychology Today blog post.

 

The Rumour Watchers (Part 1 of 2)

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 was far more than "a date that will live on in infamy."   While the American people were well aware of the massive war that was raging across much of the world, isolationists remained determined to keep the United States from getting involved.  

Though the U.S. government had been slowly building support for entering the war, public mistrust meant that even the  attack on Pearl Harbor would not be enough to overcome resistance.  In the months leading up to the attack, government mishandling of public information on the war (much of which had been censored due to security concerns) meant that the American public continued to be suspicious about what they were (and weren't) being told.

Even after the attack on Pearl Harbor, government delays in providing details about the number of dead and how the United States would respond led to a wide variety of rumours.    Much like the aftermath of 9/11, public confidence in government press statements dropped to an all-time low.   That the governnment waited weeks before releasing an official statement on Pearl Harbor hardly helped matters.

Rumors continued to fly and government warnings about avoiding "loose talk" did nothing to help.   It was about this time that the concept of "rumor clinics" first began to be floated.   While rumors in wartime are often unavoidable due to news blackouts, the role that rumor played in other countries affected by the war was getting serious attention.   In many places, spreading rumors had become a criminal offense, especially political rumors (this was pre-social media).  But what if the government actively monitored rumors to prevent "sensitive information" from being leaked and control misinformaton from getting out?   

And the U.S. government took the control of information very seriously.  On June 13, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order creating the Office of War Information (OWI).   Designed to consolidate several existing government information agencies (including the Office of Facts and Figures),  the OWI was placed in charge of delivering war propaganda, both domestically and internatioally.   Though the move was controversial considering that the American public was already suspicious of what the government was telling them, creating a central source of wartime information made sense from a military standpoint.  

Along with other OWI operations, including patriotic radio broadcasts and Voice of America,  the OWI implemented what would be known as the Rumor Project.   First proposed in January of 1942 due to  the possibility that Axis-inspired rumors might undermine the war effort, the Project was intended as a way of educating the American people on how to identify and analyse rumors.  After launching a formal study of existing rumours, the agencies in charge of the Project would examine how they were spread in foreign media and in the United States.  

The most radical proposal however involved the creation of "rumor clinics" established in colleges and universities across the United States.  In the proposal, rumor clinics were defined as "a specialized group of volunteer professors and advanced students, prepared by a short intensive course on psychological warfare under the supervision of the Civilian Morale Service to collect, analyze, and route to the Office of Education significant rumors current in the clinic’s area."

Not only were the clinics intended to research rumors but also to provide "counseling" and ensure that accurate information would be released.   Eight potential clinics had already been identified and another twenty were planned.   Much of the work in maintaining the rumor clinics would be done by social psychologists as part of a collaboration with the U.S. government.   It was the prominent role of social scientists in a wartime project that would be the sticking  point for many Washington bureaucrats, however.

Except for pioneering work by Kurt Lewin and Gordon Alport, social psychology was largely non-existent prior to World War II.   Still, with America's entry into the war, social psychologists were suddenly in demand.    With projects looking at leadership, public opinion, morale, and the highly-secret field of psychological warfare,  the U.S. government became the primary employer of social psychologists, both in Washington, D.C. and around the country.

It was hardly an ideal collaboration though.   Along with government micromanagement and problems with bureacracy, many psychologists who had previously only worked in academia were less than thrillled at the problems involved with getting funding.  Many initiatives never got past the proposal stage due to boundary disputes between different departments and misunderstandings over how psychology worked.  Others were flatly dismissed as impractical because of resistance to new ideas.   

As for the proposal that led to the establishment of the first Rumor Clinics,  getting approval was a fairly involved process until it reached the desk of the then-Commissioner of Education who offered his support.   There were still some reservations over how social scientists would be used but the Rumor Project was finally underway.  A letter sent to college presidents across the country asked for their support in setting up rumour clinics. 

The plan, as specified in the letter, was ambitious enough.   The rumor clinic would be headed by a professor of psychology or sociology chosen by the college president.   Once appointed, the professor would then recruit thirty other professors or graduate students willing to volunteer at least two hours a week to the clinic.   After a two-week specialized training course in psychological warfare,  the participants passing the course (who also had to show "demonstrated loyalty to American institutions") would then establish the clinic.    After the Rumor Clinic was formally granted official status, it would  then be run according to a special syllabus developed for the U.S. government.   Following the syllabus, all rumors coming to the clinic's attention would be evaluated and classified depending on whether the rumor should be passed on to Washington or dealt with at the local level.

Unfortunately, government bureacrats became apprehensive about the level of autonomy being granted to each clinic.  The lack of any kind of centralized control and the possibility that sensitive information might be released to the public by social scientists without proper government clearance was a sore subject for all branches of the government.  Despite calls to restrict social scientists to collecting data exclusively, plans to set up the first Rumor Clinic were already underway at Harvard University.   The psychologist who was placed in charge of the proposed clinic, psychologist Robert Knapp was a former student of Gordon Alport and an early researcher in the psychology of rumor.

The government now found itself in an awkward position since Knapp's clinic was ready to begin operation and other groups in Boston and North Carolina were preparing to launch clinics of their own.   While government agencies were considering scrapping the Rumor Project completely, that still meant that the Rumor Clinics would be operating independently without any government oversight at all.   Eventually, the Office of War Information scrapped the idea of rumor clinics completely and ordered all rumor analysis to be carried out by government agencies.

Except of course, for the fact that Rumor Clinics were already up and running and quickly spread to campuses across the United States and Canda.   The most successful of these rumor clinics would be the one at Harvard University under the direction of Gordon Alport and Robert Knapp.    While Allport continued his own research on rumour and civilian morale, the Boston Rumour Clinic was largely run by Knapp in collaboration with the Boston Herald.  It would quickly become one of the most copied clinics of its kind in North America.  

Continue to Part Two

The Price of Sexy

Using an experimental methodology, a study published recently in Psychology of Popular Media Culture assessed adolescent girls’ and young adult women’s perceptions of a peer who presented herself on Facebook in either a sexualized or nonsexualized manner. Fifty-eight adolescent girls and 60 young adult women viewed a Facebook profile with either a sexualized profile photo or a nonsexualized profile photo and then evaluated the profile owner. Results indicated that the sexualized profile owner was considered less physically attractive, less socially attractive, and less competent to complete tasks. There was a main effect of age in the judgment of social attractiveness, with young adult women giving higher ratings than adolescent girls. There were no other main effects of age or interactions between age and condition. Findings suggest that using a sexualized profile photo on Facebook comes with relational costs for girls and women. Strategies for educating young people about new media use and sexualization are discussed.

For the abstract

Family Left Homeless After Sorcery Claim

On August 3, a group of men, apparently under the influence of alcohol, attacked the home of a S0lomon Islands family, and systematically destroyed much of the furniture.  They later returned and burned the house to the ground.   According to eyewitnesses, the owner of the house, Daniel Douglas, was away at the time although his wife and children watched helplessly as their home was destroyed.

The attack occurred due to rumours that Douglas was a sorcerer who had hexed a local girl two weeks previously.   The rumours were apparently linked to the girl's collapse in school.  After she was brought to a priest for prayers, she reportedly told the priest that Douglas had bought her some fish and chips before her collapse.   This led to the belief that he had cast a spell on the girl.   While the priest and other witnesses later denied this version of events,  the allegations of sorcery continued despite Douglas' public denial.   “I’m an innocent man and have no idea of what is happening and the thoughts of the people about me,” he told local journalists.

As for the attack on the Douglas house, the mob members are believed to be from different provinces and likely took advantage of his absence to destroy the property.   Though eyewitnesses report3e calling the police for help during the attack, their calls went unanswered. 

In commenting on the attack, the priest who had prayed over the female student expressed his shock and insisted again that the stories about th girl's collapse were exaggerated.

A police investigation is now underway and the Douglas family is staying with relatives. 

For more information 

 

 

Can Online Training Help Prevent Sex Assaults?

Sexual violence on college campuses is everybody's problem.

Based on recent surveys, an estimated 19 to 25 percent of women report experiencing some form of sexual violence in college while the figures for men is somewhat lower (6.1 percent). Problems associated with sexual assault can include posttraumatic symptoms, academic difficulties, drug and alcohol abuse, and relationship issues (especially involving loss of trust). The long-term issues stemming from sexual violence are often made worse by interacting with campus police and a justice system that frequently places the blame on the victim for what happened, especially in cases of date rape or if drugs or alcohol were consumed.

While numerous colleges have established prevention programs aimed at educating men and women about sexual violence, their actual track record for success has been spotty at best. These programs tend to focus on warning potential assaulters about the penalties associated with sexual violence or on training potential victims how to reduce the risk of being victimized. In many cases however, people participating in these programs (which are often mandatory on many campuses) may not feel that the lessons learned necessarily apply to them.

To read more, check out my Psychology Today blog post. 

 

The Judge in the Asylum (Part 2 of 2)

Continued from Part One

As for Schreber himself, his mental health remained rocky even after his release.  Despite a brief separation from his wife while he lived with his mother and sister, he and Sabine eventually moved into a house in Dresden.   They also adopted a teenage girl, Fridoline, in 1906.   It was Fridoline who would later report that Daniel was "more of a mother to me than my mother."    He stayed active in legal work (though his career as a judge had been ended by his hospitalization) and also managed to keep his psychotic symptoms under control.   Schreber was still prone to occasional shouting episodes and be was often bothered by hearing voices though he rarely talked about his symptoms with family members.   Despite these symptoms, he continued to read avidly, spent time with his wife and adopted daughter, played chess and the piano, and generally lived as well as he could.

In November 1907, Sabine Schreber suffered from a serious stroke and her husband's mental condition declined rapidly soon afterward.  He was hospitalized for the third and last time at a new state asylum near Liepzig.  Among the different symptoms reported in the available records on Shreber were "outbursts of laughter and screaming, periods of depressive stupor, suicidal gestures, poor sleep, and delusional ideas of his own decomposition and rotting."   He was also preoccupied with auditory hallucinations which he interpreted as being supernatural in origin.  Though his condition fluctuated, he never really recovered and died in the asylum on April 14, 1911.

Schreber's Memoirs would have numerous fans over the years but  it was the essay written by Sigmund Freud that would make Schreber internationally known.  Never having actually met Schreber,  Freud based his 1911 essay on Schreber's Memoirs.    Since the patient, along with with many members of his  family were still alive at the time the essay came out, Freud needed to be cautious in what he wrote.  More familiar with neurotics than psychotics, Freud was introduced to the Memoirs by his then-pupil Carl Jung.   In writing about Schreber, Freud hoped to make him a test case on his own theories about human libido and "the riddle of paranoia."    It would be his most detailed essay on psychosis and, not surprisingly, attempted to explain the psychosis developed by Schreber as a defense against the homosexual urges that he had for his therapist, Dr. Flechsig.   He focused on Schreber's sense of emasculation and his preoccupation with turning into a woman.   Freud identifed Flechsig as being at the root of this delusion and that it reflected Schreber's inability to handle his homosexual libido.  

While Freud's interpretation certainly had its critics, it  ensured that more people read Schreber's Memoirs and also inspired numerous books on Schreber, his Memoirs, and his psychotic symptoms.    For many Germans, Daniel Paul Schreber would be the most famous mental patient of the early 20th century.   Perhaps more importantly, given the countless mental patients who vanished into asylums never to be heard from again, patients such as Schreber  who managed to recover enough to write about their experiences ensured that mental patients weren't completely forgotten.   That someone as highly placed as Daniel Paul Schreber could develop mental illness helped  remind the rest of society of the need for better mental health care.  

That reminder would be quickly forgotten however, especially following the collapse of Weimar Germany and the rise of Nazism and the promotion of eugenic campaigns that condemned declared mental patients and other "hereditary defectives" such as people with physical and mental impairments.   Representing them as dregs of society who were squandering resources better spent on "healthy" Germans,  Aktion T4 was born to purge Germany of these problem patients. Between 1940 and 1941, more than 13,000 people, most of whom were mental patients just like Schreber, were killed in gas chambers at the very institution where Schreber had been committed.  Though Aktion T4 would eventually be officilly abolished, one of the few instances where popular pressure forced the Nazis to scrap plans for mass murder, it still quietly continued, often as part of the far greater Holocaust that followed.   For those patients who managed to survive, the legacy would persist long after the end of World War II.

While improvements in the treatment of mental illness have largely reduced the role of the mental hospital in dealing with patients like Daniel Paul Schreber, his Memoirs still provide a glimpse at the often-anonymous existence mental patients faced during the era.   They also represent a last look of life in mental hospitals before the horrors of World War I and II, not to mention Aktion T4, would transform patient life. 

Though putting a human face on mental illness is still important in combating the stigma that often surrounds mental illness worldwide, stories such as Schreber's are still far rarer than they need to be.  Even with the quiet pressure on many mental patients to remain silient about their illness remaining strong even today, more mental patients are describing what they are experiencing and being far more open about their symptoms.   Daniel Paul Schreber's legacy lives on.