What Does a Jew Want?; or, The Political Meaning of the Phallus

Abstract

In his essay 'The 'Uncanny' (1919), Freud recounts moment when he looks accidentally at mirror and imagines he sees someone else: can still recollect that I thoroughly disliked his appearance. ... Is it not possible, though, that our dislike of [the is] vestigial trace of the archaic reaction which feels the 'double' to be something uncanny? (Uncanny 248П).1 Strangely, no matter how many uses and stagings of the he describes, Freud always returns it to castration. He even connects Rank's account of the double with dreams, within which castration represents a doubling or multiplication of genital symbol (235). After listing example after example of moments having nothing to do with castration,2 Freud concludes: We have now only few remarks to add, for animism, magic and sorcery, the omnipotence of thoughts, man's attitude to death, involuntary repetition and the castration complex comprise practically all the factors which turn something frightening into something uncanny (243). Something in Freud's world was clearly pressing in this direction with remarkable insistence.

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