An extraordinary collection of thematically linked essays, including THE UNCANNY, SCREEN MEMORIES and FAMILY ROMANCES. Leonardo da Vinci fascinated Freud primarily because he was keen to know why his personality was so incomprehensible to his contemporaries. In this probing biographical essay he deconstructs both da Vinci's character and the nature of his genius. As ever, many of his exploratory avenues lead to the subject's sexuality - why did da Vinci depict the naked human body the way hedid? What of his tendency to surround himself with handsome young boys that he took on as his pupils? Intriguing, thought-provoking and often contentious, this volume contains some of Freud's best writing.

This is the first book-length study of the uncanny, an important concept for contemporary thinking and debate across a range of disciplines and discourses, including literature, film, architecture, cultural studies, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and queer theory. Much of this importance can be traced back to Freud's essay of 1919, "The uncanny," where he was perhaps the first to foreground the distinctive nature of the uncanny as a feeling of something not simply weird or mysterious but, more specifically, as something strangely familiar. As a concept and a feeling, however, the uncanny has a complex history going back to at least the Enlightenment. Nicholas Royle offers a detailed historical account of the emergence of the uncanny, together with a series of close readings of different aspects of the topic. Following a major introductory historical and critical overview, there are chapters on the death drive, déjà-vu, "silence, solitude and darkness," the fear of being buried alive, doubles, ghosts, cannibalism, telepathy, and madness, as well as more "applied" readings concerned, for example, with teaching, politics, film, and religion. This is a major critical study that will be welcomed by students and academics but will also be of interest to the general reader.

The Uncanny: Experiments in Cyborg Culture documents the image of the cyborg in all its imaginative guises. The title is from a 1919 essay by Sigmund Freud, which describes "the uncanny" as that which is familiar and strange at the same time.

On Freud’s "The Uncanny" explores Freud’s 1919 essay of the same name and elaboration of the concept of the uncanny and how others or ‘the Other’ can impact on our selves. Catalina Bronstein and Christian Seulin bring together contributions from renowned psychoanalysts from different theoretical backgrounds, revisiting Freud’s ideas 100 years after they were first published and providing new perspectives that can inform clinical practice as well as shape the teaching of psychoanalysis. Covering key topics such as drives, clinical work, the psychoanalytic frame, and the influence of Ferenczi, On Freud’s "The Uncanny" will be useful for anyone wishing to understand the continued importance of the uncanny in contemporary psychoanalysis.

This collection brings together 15 specially commissioned stories by internationally acclaimed writers and filmmakers, to explore and update Freud's classic theory of 'The Uncanny' - his piercing and all-encompassing dissection of what gives us the creeps.

"For Geert Lovink, interviews are imaginative texts that help create global, networked discourses not only among different professions but also among different cultures and social groups. Conducting interviews online, over a period of weeks or months, allows the participants to compose documents of depth and breadth, rather than simply snapshots of timely references." "The interviews collected in this book are with artists, critics, and theorists who are intimately involved in building the content, interfaces, and architectures of new media. ... The topics discussed include digital aesthetics, sound art, navigating deep audio space, European media philosophy, the internet in Eastern Europe, the mixing of old and new in India, critical media studies in the Asia-Pacific, Japanese techno tribes, hybrid identities, the storage of social movements, theory of the virtual class, virtual and urban spaces, corporate takeover of the internet, and cyberspace and the rise of nongovernmental organizations."

Advances in technology have enabled animators and video game designers to design increasingly realistic, human-like characters in animation and games. Although it was intended that this increased realism would allow viewers to appreciate the emotional state of characters, research has shown that audiences often have a negative reaction as the human likeness of a character increases. This phenomenon, known as the Uncanny Valley, has become a benchmark for measuring if a character is believably realistic and authentically human like. This book is an essential guide on how to overcome the Uncanny Valley phenomenon when designing human-like characters in digital applications. In this book, the author provides a synopsis of literature about the Uncanny Valley phenomenon and explains how it was introduced into contemporary thought. She then presents her theories on its possible psychological causes based on a series of empirical studies. The book focuses on how aspects of facial expression and speech can be manipulated to overcome the Uncanny Valley in character design. The Uncanny Valley in Games and Animation presents a novel theory that goes beyond previous research in that the cause of the Uncanny Valley is based on a perceived lack of empathy in a character. This book makes an original, scholarly contribution to our current understanding of the Uncanny Valley phenomenon and fills a gap in the literature by assessing the biological and social roots of the Uncanny Valley and its implications for computer-graphics animation.

An interdisciplinary study of how conspiracy theories and stories persist and resonate among different Americans

Using the theoretical frameworks of Freud, Todorov, and Bahktin, this book explores how American writers of the late 20th century have translated the psychoanalytical concept of »the uncanny« into their novelistic discourses. The two texts under scrutiny - Paul Auster's »City of Glass« and Toni Morrison's »Jazz« - show that the uncanny has developed into a crucial trope to delineate personal and collective fears that are often grounded on the postmodern disruption of spatio-temporal continuities and coherences.

Writing the Uncanny sees some of the best contemporary authors explain what drew them to horror, ghost stories, folklore and beyond, and reveal how to craft unsettling fiction which resonates. An essential guide for both the casual reader and the aspiring writer of strange tales.