Meditations on the Uncanny

Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay titled The Uncanny (Das Unheimliche) was one of the first academic works to address the phenomenon of the uncanny and has since become the seminal piece on the subject. Freud approached his study from both a linguistic and psychoanalytical angle, while using E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Sandman as a literary centerpiece on which to base his ruminations on the odd effects of the uncanny.