Top 4 Uncanny Moments in Film

Recently a friend and I got on the subject of childhood movies and the uncanny. Sigmund Freud took up his own thinking on the uncanny in a essay from 1919 entitled The Uncanny. It is from the essay that most psychologists are familiar with Das Unheimliche. Freud makes a distinction between the heimliche (concealed) and the unheimliche (unconcealed). Freud described the phenomenon of the uncanny as a projection of the repressed id onto the figure which brings forth the discomforting experience. Here are my top 4 examples of the uncanny from familiar films.

4. Mary Poppins

There is something uncanny about the entire Mary Poppins story. This scene stands out for me as a moment of the uncanny.

3. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

I am not alone in sensing the uncanny in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The "Child Catcher" is a particularly uncanny moment.

2. The Wizard of Oz

What is it about the Wizard of Oz that is so familiar, yet so strange?

1. La Dolce Vita
My number one moment of the uncanny is the finalé from La Dolce Vita. Fellini is a master of resonating the unconscious.

Wilhelm Reich in A Postcognitive Negation

Chapter 2

Reichian Character Analysis: The Characterological Approach

This is an excerpt from Giobbi's first book, A Postcognitive Negation, available at amazon.com, published by Atropos Press (2010).

The aim is to provide a framework for understanding the theoretical perspective and proposal of this dissertation: that rigid personality underlies the authoritarian character. The second, and central point of the dissertation is that character precedes all aspects of position including, philosophical, ideological, moral, and vocational choices of the individual. The relationship between the scientific “experimental” paradigm in American psychology can be understood as taking on the characteristic of the authoritarian personality (sadistic character) and has established a moral sado-masochistic relationship with non-experimental, scientific, schools of thought in psychology. In order to fully realize the proposed relationship one must understand the underpinning dynamic structures of the “sado-masochistic” or “authoritarian” character on which it is based. Foucault tells us “In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.”

            We take a position that is not exclusively one of drives and defenses but of the mind as a whole. We are not as interested in mechanisms of defense as in the character of defensiveness. We have had little use for ideas about psychopathology or statistical abnormality. We largely view these as social constructs that have little relevance outside of a context as something called a “disease”. A characterological approach is one that views not “symptoms” or “pathologies” but ways of being that are structured within a context. There is necessarily an ethics involved when a social structure is considered. Lacan is clear on this “Symptoms, those you believe you recognize, seem to you irrational because you take them in an isolated manner, and you want to interpret them directly.” Character is not in isolation. Therefore we do not proclaim a morality-absent take on character. Morality is viewed as an intimate structure within the context of a privileging of components. In other words, without considering the moral structure of a weltanschauung one has little more than a disparate collection of meaningless (context absent) “symptoms”.

            In introducing the theoretical orientation which we are taking it is not an effort to engage in theoretical debate or even ask the reader to take on this theoretical orientation. It is presented as an effort to better help the reader in understanding the theoretical orientation from which we are writing. It is an effort to dis/orient the reader. For example, the obsessive-compulsive character style is much more conducive to the scientific weltanschauung, whereas the hysterical character style is much more complementary to an artistic weltanschauung –whatever that might mean. In the characterological approach, as laid down by Reich, one is not interested in pathologies or in viewing culture as a symptom. One is interested in characteristic ways of being that seem to be present in individuals. In this study of the relationships between schools of thought in American psychology we will be looking at the individual character of those schools of thought and how the dynamic between these groups fits into a larger structure. We propose this larger relational structure to be one of moral sadomasochistic exchange. Individually we will describe the moral sadistic and moral masochistic way of being. In order to clearly realize the style or way of being that is found in the scientific Weltanschauung or the artistic/theoretical weltanschauung we must not only examine what is said by each tribe, but how it is said. This level of analysis allows us to not only consider the manifest character of the message but the implicit character of the medium itself.

            The first encounter with ways of being is often found to be through the Rorschach test. Ways of thinking and perceiving are the primary material of such projective tests. Typically, the Rorschach will make apparent the underlying impetus on which the character structure is build regarding defense mechanisms and traits that come be what we call character. What is being proposed here is that far from science or theory as something that is done, it is something that is lived through a way of being that can be reflected in the character structures of the individuals that are drawn to them. In this way, science is not a method but a manifestation of a group’s way of being. The group attracts a specific character style –a particular psychological makeup. For example, a certain attention to detail, interest in the specific, and crush on the “real” is not simply an ideology but a character structure and approach to life that has been described by psychodynamic psychology –namely the obsessive-compulsive character style.

"I" and "Me": A New Model for S/O Split and the Birth of the Self

Salvador Dali, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus.

Regarding theories of how the "self" comes to be known, that is, how "I" comes to meet "me," the leading figures are Charles Horton Cooley, George Herbert Mead and Jacques Lacan. These three theorists  have proposed models for the way in which the knower becomes the knower of the known. Also called the self concept, conscious self, and the subject/object split, the concern is how one comes to be both knower and known. This question continues to be an area of exploration for artists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, and philosophers.

Mead's symbolic interactionist theory has roots in the pragmatist philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Building on the idea that we are born as an "I" -an active knower- and only come to develop the self, the "me," through social interaction. Mead describes how the I begins to relate gestures with reactions in others. Through these gestures the child comes to discover that they can manipulate the environment. Later, the child begins engaging in play. During solo play the child adopts contrasting roles, switching between doctor and patient, cop and robber, or "good guy" and "bad guy". Mead describes how this switching between playtime characters forms the child's ability to switch between perspectives, eventually developing the ability to see the I from the point of the other, which Mead calls the me. In social play, the child learns the rules of certain games. These rules, or limitations, Mead contends, serve as the first symbolic other,  which we can say comes to frustrate the child with limitations on action. This is the point from which Sigmund Freud picks up. 

Jacques Lacan, speculating on the work of French philosopher and psychologist Henri Wallon, proposed that the self is realized between the ages of 6 and 18 months, when the child comes to recognize itself in a mirror for the first time. Dubbed the mirror phase, this is the moment when the subject splits, becoming the object of its own subjectivity. The mirror stage is the foundation of the image of the I, what Lacan came to call the imaginaire (image of the imaginary).

Whereas Mead contends that the "I" becomes aware of the "me" through childhood play, and Lacan contends that the moment of self recognition occurs in relationship to one's image in a mirror, we would like to propose a yet unexplored aspect of the subject/object split.

The proposal is that dreaming is the evolutionary mechanism that brings about the image of the self and self consciousness.

Although evolutionary psychologists have proposed various models for the evolutionary function of dreaming, one which illustrates dreaming as a mechanism of self consciousness has not been proposed. Even in psychoanalysis, where the dream serves not only as the "royal road to the unconscious," but also as a foundation of psychoanalytic theory, does not make the dream-self connection.

An initial elaboration on this model, a speculative addition to both the social interactionists' and the psychodynamic insights, will be made here, although the idea is in need of more thorough elaboration.

Since infants are prelinguistic, their dreams are most likely to be similar to early memories, called flashbulb memories. This would mean a compilation of images, not unlike montage technique in film. In the prelinguistic state the framework of chronos time, dependent on the grammatical-logical reference (present, future, past) of most culutres, would not be acted. Instead, the dream life would mostly consist of kairos time, or the emotional connection of motion and transition between images. As the infant enters into linguistic stages (after 1st year through 6th year), the features of language begin to shape thought and thus the dream. Contrasting between the dream life and waking life, comparisons between transductive logic, analogic, induction and deduction, as well as chronos based time become evident. We cannot know that the dream follows rules that are unlike the rules of waking life until the rules of waking life are developed (learned) through grammatical framing and symbolic interaction. This would also include individuation, or what Jean Piaget referred to as object permanence and overcoming egocentricity.

In the dream the child encounters the image of the self. When we dream in the third person, we experience the emotional reaction in the first person. It is at this moment that the characteristics of the I experiencing the me, described by Mead, fall into perfect harmony with this dream model of self. Unlike Mead's model of the development of the self concept, which acts through play, this model depicts the child simultaneously experiencing the emotional experience from inside and from outside of the I. The child is, at once, actor and audience to their own performance.

Mere Activity of the Brain or "Nothing but" Psychology

Neuroscientific explanations of human experience are the rage. Science writers, who all too often know just enough science to be dangerous -and not enough to be discerning, enthusiastically swarm around celebrity experts, repeating and indulging their narrative with oftentimes myopic and unexamined assumptions. Quite possibly the most dangerous of our time are those who write and speak with the tone, the rhetoric, of authority, but without the authority itself. By contrast, one characteristic that we often find in those who are the most thorough and penetrating in their thoughts is their refusal to refer to themselves in outdated and chauvinistic terms such as expert or authority. Such titles are remnants of an Enlightenment attitude that is quickly passing into history.

Today it is nearly impossible to read about the human experiences of love, anger, lust, empathy, or creativity without being told that these are merely chemicals or neural connections of the brain. The explanation is convincing, and to many, it seems, satisfying. Like the interesting work in evolutionary psychology and psychoanalysis, the explanations are typically the repetition of a single narrative. In other words, the same punch-line for every joke.

We are not dismissing the necessity for, or possible importance of, such empirical insights. But we are stating, and stating emphatically, that the schwärmerei over biological explanations is not only headlong, but also limits ones understanding of themselves and others.

These explanations, given by great authorities of science, and often expounded in the presentist, narcissistic-wonderment of journalism, leaves the reader with an illusion of knowing -the false sense of security that the great ecclesiastics of modernity have it all under control.

Because examples of the mere activity of the brain explanations are so frequent, I will not present specific instances here. One can find examples in nearly any magazine or newspaper article written on a fad topic. On Valentine's Day we are told that love is due to the increased levels of the hormone oxytocin, and when we feel depressed we are told that we have an imbalance of serotonin. These explanations, given by great authorities of science, and often expounded in the presentist, narcissistic-wonderment of journalism, leave the reader with an illusion of knowing -the false sense of security that the great ecclesiastics of modernity have it all under control.

William James

The founder of American psychology, William James, called this attitude nothing-but psychology. Referring to the popular position of the German experimentalists, James described it as an "unwarrantable impertinence in the present state of psychology". Today, however, technology lends the imprimatur for pertinence. The august spectacle of computer imaging (fMRI, MRI, CT and PET scanning) conflate technology and knowing. The equipment lends a certain authority to the orientation. After all, the technology is a tool, and not the theoretical framework, of the explanation.

To better understand the mere activity of the brain attitude, we must consider the two pillars of biological psychology and neuroscience. The two central ideas are reductionism and mechanism.

Reductionism is the belief that the further some material thing is reduced (dissected) the closer we get to the foundation, base, or "truth" of that thing. It seems logical and is easy to accept that a potato is made up of microscopic cells -something we all learn in early school days. The idea that reducing something to its smallest parts will bring us to the fundamental stuff that it is, is not only incorrect, it is antiquated. The Quantum Revolution in physics dismissed the myth of reductionism. To understand this, think of an hour glass. At some point the funneling inverts and becomes large. In theoretical terms this means that reduction to the microscopic reveals an infinitely large, quantum dimension. Ideas of big, small, and necessarily reductionism, become meaningless.

What then does reductionism in biological psychology tell us? The forgotten lesson was taught by not only by William James but the Gestalt psychologists. Contemporary neuropsychology would benefit from a Gestalt or Jamesian renaissance. The lesson is: genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, and cells, taken collectively, are expressions of what we call, on the social or personal level, emotions, motivation, and action. These are not causes, but rather, qualities.

The lesson is: genes, neurotransmitters, hormones, and cells, taken collectively, are expressions of what we call, on the social or personal level, emotions, motivation, and action. These are not causes, but rather, qualities.

The second assumption of the mere activity of the brain attitude is the philosophical position of mechanism. An antiquated notion of the Enlightenment, mechanism (also known as materialism) holds that the analysis of the behavior of reduced stuff (like neurotransmitter or genes) will reveal a systematic, lawful, predictable clockwork mechanism. This position holds that the more one observes the behavior of the parts, the more one will come to understand its regular patterns. Although this belief is held by many experimentalists in behavioral science, it has been retired in other sciences for over one hundred years.

With the Einsteinian Revolution (1905) and Werner Heissenberg's Uncertainty Principle (1927) the way science is done was changed. Both of these scientific reorientations resulted from Peirce's pragmatic semiotics and entered physics into the Post-Enlightenment projects of quantum mechanics, string theory, and chaos theory. Today experimental psychology and neuroscience remain firmly rooted in an Enlightenment tradition that clings to simplistic causal relationships that can only be established through reduction and careful documentation of the mechanized patterns of behavior. The necessary step, is a reconsideration of James' 1890 Principles of Psychology.

1954: Psychoanalysis & Dr. Fredric Wertham

In 1954 the moral war against comic books reached a critical point of congressional action. These descendants of the pulps became public enemy number one during the hearings of the United States Senate Judiciary Committee on Juvenile Delinquency. At the center of the comic book witch-hunt was Dr. Fredric Wertham, a German-American psychiatrist who devoted most of his professional career declaring comic books as the main contributor to American juvenile delinquency. It was during this same year that EC Comics, the most widely-cited publisher of horror comics, released a short-lived series entitled Psychoanalysis.

Dr. Wertham was no stranger to the psychoanalytic tradition, as correspondence with Sigmund Freud led to his decision to become a psychiatrist. His most famous book, Seduction of the Innocent, appeared in 1954. The text, which presented Wertham's classic analysis of the homosexual pederasty in Batman, sexual bondage in Wonder Woman, and Superman as fascist, led to the comic book industry's preemptive establishment of the Comics Code Authority of 1954. The CCA placed regulations on the graphic depiction of violence and gore, as well as good girl art (GGA) which depicted women as sexually charged -regardless of the situation.

Psychoanalysis was one of seven titles that were published by EC Comics under the New Direction series -a reaction to the recently enacted CCA codes. Psychoanalysis saw only four issues before publisher William Gaines abandoned the comic book industry and went on to publish Mad magazine for over forty years.

Although Psychoanalysis possessed all of the intrigue and mystery of the unconscious itself, it was not the most controversial title in the series. Whereas Psychoanalysis offered young readers a voyeuristic peep at the psychoanalyst's couch, another title Judgement Day would become the most controversial of the New Direction series. An allegory of racial tensions in America, the CCA refused to approve the story unless the final frame -a black astronaut- was removed. Code administrator, Judge Charles Murphy, rescinded his decision under threat by EC Comics to publicly expose his bigotry.

Dr. Fredric Wertham continued his work to bring attention to violent and sexual content in the media. He made frequent appearances on talk shows, at congressional committee hearings, and even debated violence in film with none other than Alfred Hitchcock.

The Myth of Freud's Iceberg Model

The 1933 illustration Freud used to depict the psyche.

About ten years ago I was heading to teach a class in introductory psychology at a small liberal arts college in Pennsylvania. As I walked passed the social sciences office I encountered a box of books marked "free". Little did I know that the box contained an out of print gem, Robert C. Bolles' The Story of Psychology: A Thematic History.

The late Professor Bolles managed to present some of the most insightful and sensitive critical depictions of the history of psychology I have encountered. One of the concepts that Dr. Bolles describes is called textbookery.

One of the aspects of Textbookery is a complicated phenomenon that results in myth making -a falsehood taking on the appearance of factual truth in textbooks and classrooms. Recently I found an example that hasn't yet been discussed outside of circle of specialists of psychoanalysis.

It is nearly impossible to find an introduction to psychology textbook without the well-known "iceberg" model of Sigmund Freud. In every textbook that I have researched the iceberg diagram was labeled as "Freud's," and some quoted Freud as comparing the structure of the psyche to an iceberg. It would be difficult to find a professor of psychology who does not know of "Freud's iceberg model".

The problem is that Freud never compared the psyche to an iceberg. Translator James Strachey compiled a topical index, as well as an index of analogies in the Standard Edition of the Complete Writings of Sigmund Freud. The word iceberg does not appear in either. Scholars have searched the 24 volumes and cannot find the statement in any of Freud's writings. So where did it come from and why has it become accepted truth that Freud said it?

The quote seems to have originated in Freud's biographer, Ernest Jones' 1953-57 texts The Life and Works of Sigmund Freud. In this work Jones quotes Gustav Fechner as likening the soul to an iceberg, which he cites in a footnote to Fechner's 1860 Elements of Psychophysics, but does not attribute this quote to Freud. It seems that Jones was drawing a comparison between Fechner and Freud, and using Fechner's analogy as an illustration of Freud's idea. In addition, The only diagrams that Freud provided in his texts are similar to the one reproduced above -not an iceberg.

So how did the iceberg model come to be printed, taught, and accepted as Freud's own? Dr. James Loewen, in Lies My Teacher Told Me, develops the idea of what Bolles described as textbookery. The myth begins as an error, or a misreading that appears in one textbook. After an entire generation of students learn this "fact" they accept it and teach it to their students as verified information. Suddenly the error becomes a social truth. Subsequent textbook authors typically consult successfully published textbooks as models, and include much of the same information without consulting primary sources. Authors who consult the old textbooks encounter the "fact" that they learned form their professors (who learned it from the textbook) producing a self-sustaining, circular model of fact checking!

In the case of Freud's iceberg, it seems that it was first mentioned in an American textbook in the early 1970s and quickly spread as publishers competed for the textbook markets. Today, every introduction to psychology textbook that I consulted, all 15 published over the past decade, included "Freud's iceberg model". Whether or not Freud or Fechner developed the iceberg model might not be important to many in the field. However, it illustrates the problem with textbook and classroom homogenization. How accurate are the mass-produced textbooks that we hold as the authority of our arguments?