Sigmund Freud

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Sigmund Freud elaborated on the concept of the uncanny in his 1919 essay "Das Unheimliche" or "The Uncanny." In this essay, he drew on the work of E. T. A. He focused on how the anxiety of their loss is not unlike male castration anxiety. He continued, explaining how this anxiety may lead a male audience, robbed of their masculinity, feeling the uncanny. Their masculinity being robbed provided Freud the foundation to illustrate a central contributor to male fear. Freud went on, for the remainder of the essay, to identify uncanny effects that result from instances of "repetition of the same thing," linking the concept to that of the repetition compulsion. He included incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one's steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully. He also discussed the uncanny nature of Otto Rank's concept of the "double." Freud specifically related an aspect of the uncanny derived from German etymology. By contrasting the German adjective unheimlich with its base word heimlich ("concealed, hidden, in secret"), he proposed that social taboo often yields an aura not only of pious reverence but even more so of horror and even disgust. He noted: "What is heimlich thus comes to be unheimlich." He also quoted Schelling: "According to him, everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light."

Reader's Guide

Freud's 1919 essay "Das Unheimliche" is a key text for understanding the uncanny. In it, he argued that the uncanny is located in the strangeness of the ordinary. He criticized Jentsch's focus on the doll Olympia in Hoffmann's "The Sandman," instead emphasizing the theme of being robbed of one's eyes as a more striking instance of uncanniness, linking it to male castration anxiety. Freud identified uncanny effects from the "repetition of the same thing," such as accidentally retracing one's steps or recurring numbers, connecting this to the repetition compulsion. He also discussed the uncanny nature of the "double" as developed by Otto Rank. Freud's analysis of the German words heimlich and unheimlich showed that heimlich can mean both "familiar and agreeable" and "concealed and kept out of sight," so that unheimlich is the contrary only of the first signification. He quoted Schelling's definition: "everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light." After Freud, Jacques Lacan, in his 1962–1963 seminar "L'angoisse" ("Anxiety"), used the Unheimlich "via regia" to enter into the territory of Angst. Lacan showed how the same image that seduces the subject may suddenly show that it is dependent on something, some hidden object, and so the subject may grasp that he is not autonomous.

Did You Know?

• Freud considered E. T. A. Hoffmann the 'unrivaled master of the uncanny in literature.'
• Freud argued that the anxiety of losing one's eyes in Hoffmann's 'The Sandman' is linked to male castration anxiety.
• Freud identified uncanny effects from the 'repetition of the same thing,' such as accidentally retracing one's steps or recurring numbers.
• Freud noted that the German word heimlich can mean both 'familiar and agreeable' and 'concealed and kept out of sight,' so that unheimlich is its opposite only in the first sense.
• Freud quoted Schelling's definition of the uncanny: 'everything is unheimlich that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light.'