SOURCE: "Chamisso's Peter Schlemihl," in Literature and Psychology, Vol. XVII, Nos. 2 and 3, 1967, pp. 120-27.

In the following essay, Neumarkt interprets Peter Schlemihl as an introverted personality type with repressed extrovert tendencies.

Chamisso's novel Peter Schlemihl has remained a literary delight ever since Chamisso conceived the idea that a man's shadow was not necessarily an epiphenomenon tied up with the existence of the human personality but rather a possession to be taken care of, tended, cherished; a possession, above all, capable of being lost. An, individual may "lose his shadow" in many parts of the world, probably quite frequently. The chances are that the individual whose shadow has gone astray is not even aware of the extraordinary circumstance he finds himself in. Neither are his coevals in a world in which time and space have become commodities, subject to the exigencies of demand and supply. The busy engineer who...