The Uncanny (Penguin Classics)
by Sigmund Freud
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Sigmund Freud's essay 'Das Unheimliche' explores the psychological concept of the uncanny, a feeling of unease or eeriness that arises from something familiar yet strange. Freud examines how the uncanny is linked to repressed memories and emotions, drawing connections between aesthetic experiences and unconscious processes. The work delves into the etymology and cultural interpretations of the term 'unheimlich,' contrasting it with the familiar and the homely. Freud's analysis incorporates show more various linguistic and cultural perspectives, aiming to uncover the shared core of the uncanny across different contexts. This essay is intended for scholars and students of psychology, aesthetics, and cultural studies, providing insights into Freud's psychoanalytic theories and their application to aesthetic phenomena. show lessTags
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This is a remarkable contribution from Freud that is almost entirely ignored by psychology on account of its lack of applicability. But that is a tragedy, because this is a work of first-rate thinking. Freud explores the `Uncanny,' the no longer being at home, and traces its dimensions through literature, dreams, and childhood memories. He also contributes a brilliant speculation into Leonardo Da Vinci, later coined as an exercise in `psychobiography', in which he magnificently uses a single memory to investigate the conflicts and dilemmas of Leonardo's childhood and subsequent artistry and genius. This is a crucial text in Freud's vast body of work, I urge you to read it.
I'm going to start this review out by saying... I think Freud was a little bit of a whackadoodle. Just putting that out there.
That said, there are some things in this book that make sense - in an uncanny way (see what I did there?). The first essay on Screen Memories had me scratching my head and questioning my childhood memories. The essay on Creative Writing and Dreams had me looking at all those creative sorts around me with a new insight.
Then there is the Uncanny essay.
First, let me say that for being such a "big" name, Freud defies the stereotype of boring essays by making these remarkably approachable and interesting. In a way, they almost read like fiction - what with all the "subjects" he casually throws into the conversation. show more
Now, the uncanny essay - I am studying it so much this summer and it is a treasure trove of delights. Stop for a moment and think about it. Can you define uncanny? If you can't - this essay is for you. (You might want to skip the first part, although if you read it I can talk to you and let you know just how the first part is uncanny in and of itself!).
Highly, highly recommend, especially if you are a fan of the horror or "uncanny" genre of book. Will give you fantastic insights into just what is making those hairs on the back of your neck raise. show less
That said, there are some things in this book that make sense - in an uncanny way (see what I did there?). The first essay on Screen Memories had me scratching my head and questioning my childhood memories. The essay on Creative Writing and Dreams had me looking at all those creative sorts around me with a new insight.
Then there is the Uncanny essay.
First, let me say that for being such a "big" name, Freud defies the stereotype of boring essays by making these remarkably approachable and interesting. In a way, they almost read like fiction - what with all the "subjects" he casually throws into the conversation. show more
Now, the uncanny essay - I am studying it so much this summer and it is a treasure trove of delights. Stop for a moment and think about it. Can you define uncanny? If you can't - this essay is for you. (You might want to skip the first part, although if you read it I can talk to you and let you know just how the first part is uncanny in and of itself!).
Highly, highly recommend, especially if you are a fan of the horror or "uncanny" genre of book. Will give you fantastic insights into just what is making those hairs on the back of your neck raise. show less
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Sigmund Freud was the founder of psychoanalysis, simultaneously a theory of personality, a therapy, and an intellectual movement. He was born into a middle-class Jewish family in Freiburg, Moravia, now part of Czechoslovakia, but then a city in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At the age of 4, he moved to Vienna, where he spent nearly his entire life. show more In 1873 he entered the medical school at the University of Vienna and spent the following eight years pursuing a wide range of studies, including philosophy, in addition to the medical curriculum. After graduating, he worked in several clinics and went to Paris to study under Jean-Martin Charcot, a neurologist who used hypnosis to treat the symptoms of hysteria. When Freud returned to Vienna and set up practice as a clinical neurologist, he found orthodox therapies for nervous disorders ineffective for most of his patients, so he began to use a modified version of the hypnosis he had learned under Charcot. Gradually, however, he discovered that it was not necessary to put patients into a deep trance; rather, he would merely encourage them to talk freely, saying whatever came to mind without self-censorship, in order to bring unconscious material to the surface, where it could be analyzed. He found that this method of free association very often evoked memories of traumatic events in childhood, usually having to do with sex. This discovery led him, at first, to assume that most of his patients had actually been seduced as children by adult relatives and that this was the cause of their neuroses; later, however, he changed his mind and concluded that his patients' memories of childhood seduction were fantasies born of their childhood sexual desires for adults. (This reversal is a matter of some controversy today.) Out of this clinical material he constructed a theory of psychosexual development through oral, anal, phallic and genital stages. Freud considered his patients' dreams and his own to be "the royal road to the unconscious." In The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), perhaps his most brilliant book, he theorized that dreams are heavily disguised expressions of deep-seated wishes and fears and can give great insight into personality. These investigations led him to his theory of a three-part structure of personality: the id (unconscious biological drives, especially for sex), the superego (the conscience, guided by moral principles), and the ego (the mediator between the id and superego, guided by reality). Freud's last years were plagued by severe illness and the rise of Nazism, which regarded psychoanalysis as a "Jewish pollution." Through the intervention of the British and U.S. governments, he was allowed to emigrate in 1938 to England, where he died 15 months later, widely honored for his original thinking. His theories have had a profound impact on psychology, anthropology, art, and literature, as well as on the thinking of millions of ordinary people about their own lives. Freud's daughter Anna Freud was the founder of the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic in London, where her specialty was applying psychoanalysis to children. Her major work was The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense (1936). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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