Introduction

Some have described the study of mind in the 1990s as a turf war between neuroscience and philosophy. People disputed whether human mental life reduces essentially to stimulus-response connections, or whether one must stipulate the intervention of an active cognitive "processor." Sigmund Freud determines, after further analysis, that the feeling of uncanniness is a special case of dread. It results from the revival by a contemporary event of a wish, feeling, or other impression dating from one's earlier development that has since been either repressed or outgrown. The wish or other impression frequently assumes an animistic premise, a premise that fuses psychological and physical causation or that exaggerates the power of human thought and action, for example. Freud was efficient and shrewd in his application of critical analysis to the task of eliminating unworkable hypotheses. Human psychology, especially the nature of thought and feeling, is inherently open-ended.