ABSTRACT
The introduction sets up a dialogue between F. W. J. Schelling and Freud that is traced out through the author’s own intellectual background. There is an urgent call for these thinkers to be read together now as a radical challenge to the narrow vision and limited truth of the scientific worldview. While there is an extended philosophical and scientific lineage that binds them, as Schelling was both an early and deep thinker of the unconscious as well as the father of Naturphilosophie, the focus here is on the seemingly obscure reference Freud makes to Schelling in his essay “The Uncanny.” It is through this footnote, however, that the book sets itself to counter the predominant notion that there is no place for freedom in psychoanalysis. By way of the uncanny, we are given a novel and exciting revision of psychoanalysis that stakes out the serious philosophical weight of Freud’s work. The introduction promises the reader a trek through the philosophical foundations of Freudian thought, as well as an exploration of Schelling’s metaphysics that will call attention to its therapeutic value.
