This late 19th Century-set drama based on a true story portrays Daniel Paul Schreber, a distinguished German judge who goes quite mad. His wife commits him to recuperative care in an asylum run by the obsessive Dr Emil Flechsig, but the latter finds his schizophrenic new patient an extremely difficult case. As striking delusions awaken Schreber to an invisible world of possibility, the intense youg man begins his transformation into a woman, putting him further at odds with Dr Flechsig and perhaps condemning him to confinement forever.