Why does a familiar face, a watching doll, or a repeated coincidence suddenly make your skin prickle?

In The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud explores a fear that needs no obvious danger. A stranger looks exactly like you. A coincidence happens too often. Freud follows these unsettling moments through language, daily life, folklore and fiction, asking what makes something familiar feel so deeply strange.

He examines Ernst Jentsch’s idea that uncertainty lies behind the feeling, then turns to German words and a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann. His own argument points inward: the uncanny, he proposes, is something once familiar that the mind pushes away, only to meet it again.

이 책에서 발견할 것들

• A word with secrets Follow Freud into dictionaries, where the familiar and the strange draw unexpectedly close.
• The trouble with doubles Explore why seeing your likeness elsewhere can turn recognition into a source of fear.
• When repetition feels threatening Consider how repeated coincidences and losing your way become examples in Freud’s argument.
• Wishes, magic and the dead Examine Freud’s account of beliefs that give thoughts the power to cause harm.
• Fiction changes the rules Discover why Freud distinguishes the fears of everyday life from those stirred by stories.

이런 분들이 좋아할 거예요

유령 이야기를 좋아하거나, 인형과 분신이 왜 소름을 돋게 하는지 궁금하거나, 한 사상가가 자신의 이론을 시험하는 과정을 지켜보기 좋아한다면 즐겁게 읽을 수 있어요.