With Playthings as the August edition, Alex Pheby's gripping, fictional take on the 19th-century German judge Daniel Paul Schreber's experience of psychosis, we talk to Susie Orbach. With Orbach, we open out from the Schreber case to ask about the value of psychotherapy... the importance of 'the session', whether it's writing or talking, how it works and whether it can help an individual join the wider the community. Before Sigmund Freud's formal psychoanalysis began, Schreber (1842-1911) set about writing out his experience of mental illness in "Memoirs of My Nervous Illness" which would become an important source account for Freud and others. Susie Orbach is a psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, writer and social critic.
