Freud and Jentsch read Hoffmann’s Uncanny Automata

Abstract

The following paper examines the elaboration of the concept of uncanny between literature and psychoanalysis. In shaping the concept, both Ernst Jentsch in “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” (1906) and Sigmund Freud in “The Uncanny” (1919) carefully read Hoffmann’s fantastic stories of automata. While Freud develops his theory of the uncanny (concerning the automatism of unconscious repetition) by reading “The Sandman”, Jentsch dwells on “Automata” in his approach on intellectual uncertainty. In this paper I also discuss anthropomorphic machines and the idea of uncanny valley in robotics, concluding that the notion of uncanny always involves negative anagnorisis, or misrecognition between inside/outside; human/automaton; animate/inanimate.