...I aim to show that by giving a reading of Schnitzler's writings in the light of the "Uncanny" it is possible to frame a more robust theory of the "Uncanny" than that originally proposed by Freud, one which takes Kleinian aggression into account. Certain of Schnitzler's short stories and novellas in particular, "Flowers" (1894), "The Murderer" (1910), Dying (1892), Dead Men Tell No Tales (1897), Dream Story (1926), even his novel The Road to the Open (1908) - these prose works are peopled by dead bodies, by characters who already seem to half-inhabit a penumbral, shadowy world in which death beckons. ...characters seem almost by definition to be potentially suicidal from the outset, either consciously or unconsciously. ...what is most striking of all is the extent to which characters are, quite literally, haunted by ghostly characters or images of ghostliness which taint and poison their existence with phantasies of death to the point where these characters are very nearly precipitated to their real or phantasied deaths too.3 These ghostly characters seem almost to lean back into life in order to snatch the living characters down into the abyss of death with them and death is presented as very seductive. ...just as a painter poses a living woman for Venus or The Virgin, although in his mind' s-eye he reconstructs some ideal image from his past, so Poe, when in his tales he paints his dying Virginia's poses, always reproduces the great mother's image that gleams through.7 For Bonaparte, therefore, stories such as "The Oval Portrait" and "Ligeia", and poems such as "Annabel Lee", all give expression to Poe's unresolved Oedipus complex, his unconscious longing for union with the dead mother. In my analysis of Schnitzler in the light of the "Uncanny", therefore, I will highlight three recurring strands, which are all inextricably intertwined: aggression, the fusion of the erotic and death, and the "uncanny" body.