Freud on 'The Uncanny'

Freud's essay on the 'Uncanny', is an elaboration of the work of Ernst Jentsch, who describes the uncanny as a feeling that creates unfamiliarity in a situation, it is the product of "intellectual uncertainty" his examples include the use of life like objects, like a doll where the human mind attributes character to the object because it looks similar to a human but because the mind is used to seeing a human and the doll lacks many of the qualities that a human possess's such as animation and a brain, it creates an uncanny feeling. He explains the use of the 'uncanny'  focusing predominantly in literature, "In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately" He uses E.T.A Hoffman's story, 'The Sandman' and primarily talks about the main character Nathaniel's love interest Olympia, as the character turns out to be a doll created by Coppelius. Nathaniel so bewildered by the incident succumbs to another mental breakdown that he struggles to recover from. It was this uncertainty of whether Olympia was real that shook his rational mind, and created his intellectual uncertainty which gave him the feeling of 'the uncanny' that is so often attributed to a negative response i.e terror.

Freud refers to Hoffman as the unrivaled master of the uncanny, but in his essay argues that Olympia is not the only element of the uncanny in the story, he expands the theory of the uncanny and applies his own psychological theories to it, he interconnects his oedipal theory and his theory of the ego, to create a stronger basis for the uncanny theory. He disagree's with Jentsch, he argues that Olympia is not the only example of the uncanny in 'The Sandman', he argues this using information from his own research. In his own research he has done studies on the meaning of imagery in dreams, in a common anxiety dream about losing ones eyesight he has noted that the loss of eyesight is akin to his castration complex that is within his oedipal theory. He argues that Hoffman has brought Nathaniel's fear of losing his eyes at the crucial scene with Nathaniel and his father due to it representing the symbolic fear of castration. He argues also that the sandman always appears as a "disturber of love" which in turn represents the fear of castration again, as Nathaniel feels he is unworthy of love.
Outlining the Uncanny in this way gives birth to a whole new reading of the theory, as its boundaries are pushed by fear,or anything that creates "cognitive dissonance". This theory has transcended to film, because film is a visual medium, it can create the Uncanny in a person viewing the screen, rather than the characters in literature experiencing the Uncanny, a consumer can feel the Uncanny. Techniques have been exercised especially in the horror genre, such as using footage backwards, or images of dolls moving such as 'Chucky'.