The Uncanny

Screen Memories/Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood/Family Romances/Creative Writers and Daydreaming/The Uncanny

Freud was fascinated by the mysteries of creativity and the imagination. The major pieces collected here explore the vivid but seemingly trivial childhood memories that often ‘screen’ far more uncomfortable desires; the links between literature and daydreaming – and our intensely mixed feelings about things we experience as ‘uncanny’.

His insights into the roots of artistic expression in the triangular ‘family romances’ (of father, mother and infant) that so dominate our early lives, and the parallels between our own memories and desires and the tormented career of a genius like Leonardo, reveal the artistry of Freud’s own writing. And his celebrated study of Leonardo, Freud’s first exercise in psycho-biography, brilliantly uses a single memory to reveal the childhood conflicts behind both Leonardo’s remarkable achievements and his striking eccentricity.

General Editor: Adam Phillips