Chamisso was a German writer and poet born in an aristocratic French family emigrated to Germany in 1792. This paper, inquiring into Chamisso's tale "L'étrange histoire de Peter Schlemihl", his first issued writing, points to its autobiographical features that anticipate the life of its author even in its precise details. This paper shows how artistic sublimation allowed the writer to succeed in finding for himself a path towards scientific work and literary creation, and emphasizes that this kind of "intellectual acceptation" of the repressed could be seen as equivalent to the result of a psychoanalysis treatment.
German romanticism; primary narcissism; sublimation; Ego ideal