Self Other Self

doppelganger
Originally uploaded by darcey kimiko.

"I" and "Not I"

The double, both in literature and out of it, is an enormous and seductive subject. As an imagined figure, a soul, a shadow, a ghost or a mirror reflection that exists in a dependent relation to the original, the double pursues the subject as his second self and makes him feel as himself and the other at the same time. While its imaginative power springs from its immateriality, from the fact that it is and has always been a phantasam, the psychological power of the double lies in its ambiguity, in the fact that it can stand for contrast or opposition, but likeness as well.

M. Zivokvic, The Double as the "Unseen" of Culture: Towards a Definition of the Doppelganger Linguistics and Literature Vol.2, No 7, 2000 p. 122

Mouth

Twilight Circus II : The Faceless Clown
Originally uploaded by TommyOshima.

Broken

Mannequin Assembly
Originally uploaded by Nadya Peek.

Ingenious Dolls

When we proceed to review the things, persons, impressions, events and situations which are able to arouse in us a feeling of the uncanny in a particularly forcible and definite form, the first requirement is obviously to select a suitable example to start. Jentsch has taken as a very good instance 'doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate'; and he refers in this connection to the impression made by waxwork figures, ingeniously constructed dolls and automata....Jentsch writes: 'In telling a story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton, and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately." That, as we have said, would quickly dissipate the peculiar emotional effect of the thing.

Sigmund Freud, "The Uncanny" in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. & trs. James Strachey, vol. XVII (London: Hogarth, 1953), pp. 219-252.