The play Der Andere (1893, The Other) by Paul Lindau (1819–1839) stages a case of schizophrenia (‘split consciousness’) whose protagonist, a well respected public prosecutor in Berlin, unwittingly leads a nocturnal double life, eventually burglarizing his own house. The play’s interactions with discourses in medicine and media will be explored as Der Andere was treated by physicians as an authentic psychiatric case, and was produced as an early silent film with Lindau’s participation as screenplay writer. Lindau’s play seems to be strongly intertwined with a prominent case of the French physicians Adrien Proust, father of author Marcel Proust, and Jules Bernard Luys, who administered hypnotherapy to a delinquent lawyer proving him unaware of the crimes he had committed. Ideas and concepts circulate between these different fields of fact and fiction, displaying prevailing borders to be permeable. These processes of exchange in particular lead to the remarkable productivity of the play Der Andere.