Daniel Paul Schreber was a German judge who was famous for his personal account of his own experience with schizophrenia. Schreber experienced three distinct periods of acute mental illness. The first of these, in 1884-1885 was what was then diagnosed as dementia praecox. He described his second mental illness, from 1893 to 1902, making also a brief reference to the first disorder from 1884 to 1885, in his book Memoirs of My Nervous Illness. The Memoirs became an influential book in the history of psychiatry and psychoanalysis because of its interpretation by Sigmund Freud. There is no personal account of his third disorder, in 1907–1911, but some details about it can be found in the Hospital Chart. During his second illness he was treated by Paul Flechsig, Pierson (Lindenhof), and Guido Weber.

Dementia praecox is a disused psychiatric diagnosis that originally designated a chronic, deteriorating psychotic disorder characterized by rapid cognitive disintegration, usually beginning in the late teens or early adulthood. Over the years, the term dementia praecox was gradually replaced by the term schizophrenia, which initially had a meaning that included what is today considered the autism spectrum.