Jentsch has taken as a very good instance ‘doubts whether an apparently inanimate being is really alive, or conversely, whether a lifeless object might well in fact be animate’; an he refers in this connection to the impression made by waxwork figures, ingeniously constructed dolls and automata. To these he adds the uncanny effects of epileptic fits, and of the impression of automatic, mechanical processes at work behind the ordinary appearance of mental activity.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 347
We find in the story of the Sand-Man the other theme on which Jentsch lays stress, of a doll that appears to be alive. Jentsch believes that a particularly favorable condition for awakening uncanny feelings is when there is intellectual uncertainty whether an object is alive or not., and when an inanimate object becomes too much like an animate one. Now, dolls are of course rather closely connected with childhood life. We remember that in the earlier games children do not distinguish at all sharply living and inanimate objects, and that they are especially fond of treating their dolls like live people.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 355
The idea of the ‘double’ does not necessarily disappear with the passing of primary narcissism, for it can receive fresh meaning from the later stages of the ego’s development. A special agency is slowly formed there, which is able to stand over against the rest of the ego, which has the function of observing and criticizing the self and of exercising a censorship within the mind, and which we become aware of as our ‘conscience’. The fact that an agency of this kind exists, which is able to treat the rest of the ego like an object – the fact, that is, that man is capable of self-observation – renders it possible to invest the old idea of a ‘double’ with a new meaning and to ascribe a number of things to it – above all, those things which see to self-criticism to belong to the old surmounted narcissism of old times.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P357
The Repetition used by Flether Hanks often caused 'Uncanny' effects in his comics. Characters seemed to be 'cloned' like Dolly the Sheep.
The other themes of ego disturbance by Hoffmann can easily be estimated along the same lines as the theme of the ‘double’. They are a harking back particular phases in the evolution of the self-regarding feeling, a regression to a time when the ego had not yet marked itself off sharply from the external world and from other people. I believe that these factors are partly responsible for the impression of uncanniness, although it is not easy to isolate and determine exactly their share of it.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 358
These last examples of the uncanny are to be referred to the principle which I have called ‘omnipotence of thoughts’, taking the name from an expression used by one of my patients. And now we find ourselves on familiar ground. Our analysis of instances of the uncanny has led us back to the old, animistic conception of the universe. This was characterized by the idea that the world was peopled with the spirits of human beings; by the subjects narcissistic over evaluation of his own mental processes; by the belief in omnipotence of thoughts and the technique of magic based on that belief; by the attribution to various outside persons and things of carefully graded magical powers, or ‘mana’; as well as all the other creations with the help of which man, in the unrestricted narcissism of that stage of development, strove to fend off the manifest prohibitions of reality. It seems as if each one of us has been through a phase of individual development corresponding to this animistic stage in primitive men, that none of us has passed through it without preserving some residues and traces of it which are still capable of manifesting themselves, and that everything that now strikes us as ‘uncanny’ fulfills the condition of touching those residues of animistic mental activity within us and bringing them to expression.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 363
There is one more point of general application which I should like to add, though, strictly speaking, it has been included in what has already been said about animism and modes of working of the mental apparatus that have been surmounted; for I think it deserves special emphasis. This is that the uncanny effect is often and easily produced when the distinction between imagination and reality is affected, as when something that we have hitherto regarded as imaginary appears before us in reality, or when a symbol takes over the full functions of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. It is this factor which contributes not a little to the uncanny effect attaching to magical practices. The infantile element in this, which also dominates the minds of neurotics, is the over-accentuation of psysical reality in comparison with material reality – a feature closely allied to the belief in the omnipotence of thoughts.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 367
Let us take the uncanny associated with the omnipotence of thoughts, with the prompt fulfillment of wishes, with secret injurious powers and with the return of the dead. The condition under which the feeling of uncanniness arises here is unmistakable. We – or our primitive forefathers – once believed that these possibilities were realities, and were convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays we no longer believe in them, we have surmounted these modes of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and the old ones still exist within us ready to seize upon any confirmation. As soon as something actually happens in our lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny; it is as though we were making a judgment something like this: ‘So, after all, it is true that one can kill a person by the mere wish!’ or ‘So the dead do live on and appear on the scene of their former activities!’ and so on. Conversely, anyone who has completely and finally rid himself of animistic beliefs will be insensible to this type of the uncanny. The most remarkable coincidences of wish fulfillment, the most mysterious repetition of similar experiences in a particular place or on a particular date, the most deceptive sights and suspicious noises – none of these things will disconcert him or raise the kind of fear which can be described as ‘a fear of something uncanny’.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 371
The imaginative writer has this license among many others that he can select his world of representation so that it either coincides with the realities we are familiar with or departs from them in what particulars he pleases. We accept this ruling in every case. In fairy tales, for instance, the world of reality is left behind from the very start, and the animistic system of beliefs is frankly adopted. Wish-fulfillments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation of inanimate objects, all these elements so common in fairy stories, can exert no uncanny influence here….in the realm of fiction many things are not uncanny which would be so if they happened in real life.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 373
Concerning the factors of silence, solitude and darkness, we can only say that they [uncanny feelings] are actually elements in the production of the infantile anxiety from which the majority of human beings have never become quite free.
Freud – 14. Art and Literature, The ‘Uncanny’ P 376
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