Carl August von Eschenmayer and the Somnambulic Soul

Carl August von Eschenmayer (1768–1852) was an important pioneer of Romantic psychology and advocate of Magnetic somnambulism, remembered mostly for his collaboration with Justinus Kerner in the latter’s bestseller Die Seherin von Prevorst (1829). After Karl Immermann had lampooned these two as a comical duo of superstitious fools in his popular satirical novel Münchhausen (1841), Eschenmayer’s reputation was in shatters. Nevertheless, Ricarda Huch was right to describe Eschenmayer’s Naturphilosophie and animal magnetism as full of “delicate and profound” observations. Containing the first discussion of Eschenmayer ever published in English, this chapter provides a general overview of his life and development, with special attention to the psychology he built on German Idealist foundations and to the role of animal magnetism and Somnambulic trance within that context.