The uncanny is that kind of terrifying which relates to something that was once very familiar and for a long time intimate.

The prolific and influential neurologist, proponent of psychoanalysis, and groundbreaking analyst, Sigmund Freud, is honored through a new release by Oxy Publications, from the Selected Series. Continuing his exploration of the depths of the human mind, the father of psychoanalysis examines in this brief but particularly influential essay the sensation of the uncanny, which “undoubtedly belongs to the realm of the terrifying, that which elicits unease and fear,” but at the same time is not necessarily unknown or completely new to us.

Drawing numerous examples from literature and reality (from Herodotus to E.T.A. Hoffmann, the author of The Nutcracker, and from minor childhood memories to the abrupt recall of culturally outdated ways of thinking), Freud once again finds a way to guide us through hidden corners of our own minds that we often struggle to even recognize.

Author Biography: Sigmund Freud, one of the most brilliant yet controversial minds of the 20th century, was born in Freiberg in the then Austrian Empire in 1856. He studied medicine in Vienna and neurology in Paris and from 1886 began to specialize in nervous and cerebral disorders, until his research led him to create a completely new medical method for understanding human personality, known as psychoanalysis. A professor of neuropathology at the University of Vienna since 1902, Freud continued his work despite severe backlash from the medical community regarding many of his theories. In 1938, he left Austria fleeing from the Nazis and died the following year in London, having been diagnosed with cancer as early as 1923.