Hauntings, androids and trauma: on the Uncanny and the mind/body relationship
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4396/2025SFL04Keywords:
uncanny, Freud, mind/body relationship, haunted houses, androids, traumaAbstract
This article offers a reinterpretation of Sigmund Freud’s renowned essay The Uncanny (1919a), focusing on the connection between the uncanny and the mind/body relationship. Starting from Freud's well-known antinomy between familiarity and strangeness, I aim to demonstrate that one of the most significant manifestations of the uncanny emerges precisely when the perception of continuity between mind and body is disrupted. The analysis begins with the figure of the ghost, a Freudian example that is less frequently cited than others (such as the doll), but rich in symbolic implications, including the return of magical thinking, the strangeness of familiar places, and the relationship with death. Next, we will examine two other paradigmatic figures of the uncanny: the android, which embodies the ambiguity between human and artificial, and traumatic experiences, the uncanny core of which is the loss of consciousness. Through these three cases, I will attempt to highlight the fragility of the boundary between the self and body, emphasizing how this fracture is one of the main sources of the uncanny.
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Works published in RIFL are released under Creative Commons Licence:Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
