COP: Fear of eyes and Freud's The Uncanny

I've been looking into different fears within horror films, one of these being the fear of anything happening to eyes. There are some texts which really inspire this fear.

THE SANDMAN - DER SANDMANN 

The Sandman by E.T.A Hoffman published in 1817 is a story that shows the psychological effects of a scare to a young child. It echoes the Freudian theme of The Uncanny. It follows a man called Nathaniel, who as a child was visited by a man called Coppolla who he refered to as the Sandman. Someone who stole eyes to feed to his children. He is caught by this man and punished, Nathaniel's father stepping in to protect him (and his eyes). Nathaniel is then haunted by the fear of this man and the fear of him stealing eyes for the rest of his life. Eventually being admitted to an asylum when the woman he falls in love with turns out to be an automaton (and her eyes are on the floor in front of him).

FREUDIAN THEORY 

This story is a main text Freud refers to when talking about The uncanny. The loss of eyes/ eyesight as a main theme in the texts, represents symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from the social norms (Nathaniel's screams of horror at the start, his spying on the elders, the punishment was Coppolla attempting to blind him)

By contrasting the German adjective unheimlich with its base word heimlich ("concealed, hidden, in secret"), he proposes that social taboo often yields an aura not only of pious reverence but even more so of horror and even disgust, as the taboo state of an item gives rise to the commonplace assumption that that which is hidden from public eye (cf. the eye or sight metaphor) must be a dangerous threat and even an abomination - especially if the concealed item is obviously or presumingly sexual in nature
(exert from wikipedia).

Freud's Uncanny theory suggests that the lost of an eye is simply a metaphor for castration and the fear of losing our sexuality. "Psychoanalytic experience reminds us that some children have a terrible fear of damaging or losing their eyes. Many retain this anxiety into adult life and fear no physical injury so much as one to the eye. And there is a common saying that one will “guard something like the apple of one’s eye. The study of dreams, fantasies and myths has taught us also that anxiety abut one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is quite often a substitute for the fear of castration." (The Uncanny, page 139)

APPLIED TO HORROR 

His theory can be applied to horror films, as it would be regarded distasteful to have actual genital  castration on screen during horror films (although it has been done, it hasn't been shown explicitly) Many directors opt for eyes to take their place, as they are something equally important to us. It also relates to childhood fears which remain with us as adults.

Un Chien Andalou is one film I looked into that is a heavily surrealist film, aimed to unnerve the bourgeoisie  Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali fused their dreams/nightmares into a film. Un Chien Andalou could be regarded as a early horror film as there are things within it that were unnerving (such as a man slicing a woman's eyeball open.. lots of Freudian theory could be applied to it and feminist critics response about that). It was well received by the audience, perhaps one of the first signifiers that people responded to horror well when it was contained on screen.