The Munich psychotherapist and physician Albert von Schrenck-Notzing was a wealthy, fanatical outsider who set up an occult laboratory in his palace. There, he held séances that attracted personalities of his time, such as Thomas Mann. The mediums presented during these events created the concrete impression that they were producing human limbs with psychic energy. This phenomenon met with both intense rejection and fascination—Thomas Mann had "not the shadow of a doubt" about the occult authenticity of the materialization he witnessed. Schrenck-Notzing began his career as one of the first progressive sexual medicine practitioners. He worked with hypnosis and suggestion and was a significant figure in the history of depth psychology, interacting with Charcot, Freud, and psychiatrists interested in the occult.