1

nheimlich is the negation of the adjective Heimlich, derived from the semantic core of Heim, home.
Except, it turns out that heimlich has two meanings. The first sense is the most literal: domestic, familiar,
intimate. The second meaning departs from the positive, literal sense to the more negative
metaphorical sense of hidden, secret, clandestine, furtive.

issn.1500-1989-2017-02-02

Freud further investigates the things or persons who instigate the feeling of the uncanny. He provides an
example of a writer, E. T. A. Hoffman, who wrote a short story about ‘the Sand-Man’. In the story, a man
recalls childhood memories, in which he was frightened by the image of the so-called Sand-Man,
memories that have haunted him throughout his life. This is a terrible story about the so-called Sand-
Man who removes children’s eyes. When examining it in depth, it appears to be of value for the
understanding of the feeling of the uncanny as the fear of losing ones eyes is terrifying. Freud looks back
at his experience in psychoanalysis and says: “We know from psycho-analytic experience, however, that
the fear of damaging or losing one’s eyes is a terrible one in children” (Freud 231). This emphasises the
effect of the Sand-Man and more importantly how and from where the uncanny can grow. Freud
reiterates the importance of focussing not on the 15 imagination but on the feeling of the uncanny: “We
know now that we are not supposed to be looking on at the products of a madman’s imagination, (…)
and yet this knowledge does not lessen the impression of uncanniness in the least degree” (Freud 230).
Freud attempts to explain that some may believe that seeing and feeling the presence of the so-called
SandMan comes from the mind of a madman. People who see or experience things that cannot be
explained or felt by others or are clearly invented, are labelled as mad, as these ideas come forth from
somewhere others cannot resonate with and therefore do not understand where others come from.
However, Freud also states that researchers must look beyond and focus on the feeling of the uncanny
that one experiences. This example of a man haunted by his memories aligns with Freud’s definition of
the uncanny. As stated above, Freud believes that the uncanny leads back to the old and familiar. In this
case, the fright that this man still experiences can be traced to his childhood, which is old and familiar to
him. This is confirmed by Freud: “This short summary leaves no doubt, I think that the feeling of
something uncanny is directly attached to the figure of the Sand-Man” (Freud 230). This further
indicates why Freud did not previously specify the ‘old and familiar’—it means something different to
each individual. Everyone has a place connected to the feeling of the uncanny, and because this differs
for everyone, it must be examined in every case.

Although distinct, these two reflections on the uncanny are admittedly inspired by a tale of Gothic
fiction of the early nineteenth century written by E.T.A. Hoffmann and entitled “The Sandman” (1817).
Whereas Jentsch sees the doll or womanlike automaton of the story (Olympia) as the most striking
source of the uncanny due to the uncertainty or un-decidability of the inanimate/animate opposition
(i.e., due to the doubt as to whether lifeless objects may or not be animate), Freud claims that the basis
of the uncanny is the character of the sandman himself—a terrifying mythic figure who tears out
children’s eyes, an enforcer of castration, and thereby an eerie double of the protagonist’s father.
 2

Uncanny_Laughter_Reworking_Freuds_Theory

Enstranged_Strangers_OOO_the_Uncanny_and

Of course, the famous focal point of “The ‘Uncanny’”, and the archetypal blueprint of all readings of the
uncanny in fiction, is his analysis of E.T.A Hoffman’s short story The Sandman. Here, Freud traces the
psychic trajectory of repression and return in the life of the story’s protagonist Nathaniel. The tale of the
monstrous sandman who steals children’s eyes, told to Nathaniel as a boy, is read into the figure of
Coppelius, a lawyer whom Nathaniel associates with the unexplained death of his father. Coppelius is
himself later transferred into the figure of Coppola, an optician. Spurning his lover Clara, Nathaniel falls
in love with an artfully constructed automaton, which is only revealed to him as such when he sees her
eyeless face. This pronounced association with eyes and its psychologically traumatic effect on Nathaniel
at various points in his short life is explained by Freud as a substitute for a repressed castration anxiety,
relayed through a symbolic oedipal configuration. The story is, therefore, in Freud’s reckoning, a
paradigmatic dramatization of a “return of the repressed”. So far so good, but Freud’s explicit claim is
that the uncanny can only be produced in literature that coincides with “common reality”.73 In other
words, the power and profusion of Hoffmans uncanny is possible because his tales supposedly subscribe
to a form of literary realism. Should the supernatural or preternatural arise, as it often does in these
stories, the uncanny effect is still produced, in Freud’s reckoning, because “by the time we have seen
through his trick it is already too late and the author has achieved his object”.74 Conversely, if the
implausibility of the fictional realm is foregrounded, then the uncanny cannot occur.

Freud opens his classical text on the subject by questioning Ernst Jentsch’s claim that the uncanny is
produced by a ‘doubt as to whether an apparently living being really is animate and, conversely, doubt
as to whether a lifeless object may not in fact be animate’.1 What Jentsch is referring to is the character
of Olympia in E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story ‘Der Sandmann’ – a lifelike automaton that confounds the
protagonist (Nathaniel), who falls in love with it. In an attempt to overturn Jentsch’s view that humans
automatically take automata to be human when they see them behave like humans, Freud develops a
different reading of Hoffmann’s short story, focusing not on Olympia but on the ‘theme of the Sand-Man
who tears out children’s eyes’.2 This manoeuvre allows Freud to reconnect the uncanny to the
processes of repression, and thus to castration anxiety.3 To Freud the uncanny is not a direct reaction to
mechanical devices but a neurological (internalized) form of automaticity that is realized as an aesthetic
or affective experience – deja vu, the appearance of a doppelganger, delusions of grandeur, paranoid
behaviours, and so on. The uncanny is driven by the compulsion to repeat, and that compulsion is
automatic. Rather than a simple reaction to technology, the uncanny is an intentional, embodied (even
if symptomatic) response to ‘something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light’.
 3

The uncanny can also be defined by comparing Jentsch and Freud’s approaches towards it. Both Jentsch
and Freud reflect their views on E.T.A Hoffman’s short story The Sandman (Ger. Der Sandmann),
published in 1816. In this short story, two significant points drive us to the feeling of the uncanny. The
first one is the ‘fear of one’s losing eyes’, which Nathaniel, the protagonist of the story, is worried about.
The second point regarded to create the uncanny feeling is Olympia. She is the ‘ideal beloved’ of
Nathaniel because she listens to him, dances, sings and is never bored with listening to Nathaniel’s
poems. She later turns out to be an automaton (a moving mechanical device that is in imitation of a
human being), which Nathaniel realizes when he finds out that she was the production of Coppola and
Spalanzani. Regarding the uncanny in that story, Freud states that Jentsch emphasizes the automaton,
Olympia, as follows: Jentsch says: “

In telling a story one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is to leave the
reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton and to
do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so that he may not be
led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately, since that, as we have said, would quickly dissipate
the peculiar emotional effect of the thing. E. T. A. Hoffmann has repeatedly employed this psychological
artifice with success in his fantastic narratives.’” (Freud, 1919, p.5)

Terry Castle states that “it is not simply that Freud fixes on E.T.A Hofmann (1776-1822) — who began his
literary career in the last decade of the eighteenth century and drew heavily on the rich traditions of the
late eighteenth-century Gothic and fantastic fiction” and adds that he was the “archetypal exponent of
what might be called uncanny consciousness” (Castle, 1995, p.10). Regarding the late eighteenth-
century fiction, Freud thinks that “Hoffmann is the first and “unrivalled master” of the uncanny—the
writer who has succeeded in producing uncanny effects better than anyone else” (1995, p.10). Freud
thinks that Hoffmann draws attention to the features of the late eighteenth century, so he preferred The
Sandman to analyze this term. In other words, Hoffman both reflects on the traditions of his century as
well as presenting the technological improvements.

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In this essay, Freud proposes a psychoanalytical reading of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s short story Sandman in
which Nathanael, the protagonist, is shocked and frightened by a number of disturbing circumstances.
The first of these events is when Nathanael meets Coppola, a man who looks impressively like a
menacing man named Coppelius, whom he had met as a child and whose image bodied forth the mythic
figure of the Sandman in his childhood nightmares. The second disturbing situation arises when
Nathanael realizes that the woman he is in love with, Olimpia, is in fact a doll, which is revealed in a
shocking scene in which the protagonist sees Olimpia without her eyes, for her eyeballs are being
replaced. The image of a loved one missing the eyeballs with no sight of blood, but simply empty orbits
instead, added to Nathanael’s childhood fear of the Sandman, a collector of eyes, aptly exemplify
Freud’s concept of the uncanny. His contention is that, upon reading Hoffmann’s story, the reader, along
 4

with the protagonist, experiences something that was hidden from sight, concealed, which is then
unexpectedly revealed, thus causing a “shock”, precisely one of the definitions for the term Heimliche:
‘Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it, withheld from others
(FREUD, 2003, p.22)’. However, the term also means ‘belonging to the house or the family […], intimate,
friendly comfortable; the enjoyment of quiet content, etc.’ (2003, p.22). So, being Unheimliche the
opposite of Heimliche, it is the opposite of comfortable, thus pointing to that which is disturbing yet
somehow familiar, such as a known face or thing out of its usual place.

AS362017WLITM56

Freud goes on to explain this concept in light of E.T.A. Hoffman’s short story “The Sandman,” in which
the uncanny consists of the titular figure, essentially a monster from a childhood bedtime story, that
robs the protagonist, Nathaniel, of his eyes as an adult. Here, Freud further rejects Jentsch’s notion that
uncanny sensations are awakened when “intellectual uncertainty” relates to whether an object is alive.
In the case of “The Sandman,” he refers to the doll Olympia who appears as a living being. In actuality,
she is Nathaniel’s neighbor’s daughter, an automaton, but represents the protagonist’s object of desire.
Olympia’s “uncanniness,” however, is overshadowed and rendered insignificant by the angst that the
protagonist feels toward the Sandman, claims Freud. The doll’s presence in the story remains interesting
and worthy of exploration as a 5 supplement to, rather than the epitome of the uncanny. As I will
discuss in Chapter 3, dolls play a liminal role in Ferrante’s text as well, symbolically setting the stage for
the protagonists who are the true catalysts of the uncanny. An important feature is noted by Freud
through the examination of the literary themes in Hoffman, whom the psychoanalyst refers to as “the
unrivalled master of conjuring up the uncanny.” This prominent theme is: “the idea of a ‘double’ in
every shape and degree, with persons, therefore, who are to be considered identical by reason of
looking alike; Hoffman accentuates this relation by transferring mental processes from the one person
to the other... in other words, by doubling, dividing, and interchanging the self (Freud, “The ‘Uncanny’”
9). This image of the double is quite specific and evokes the idea of twins or two people who are alike
physically and mentally, and might literally be interchanged. In Dorian Gray’s case, this proves to be true
of himself and his portrait. Ferrante’s novel employs the “double” in a less literal way by exemplifying
the “doubling, dividing, and interchanging the self amongst two best friends, each of whose identity
becomes enmeshed in the other’s. Freud eventually dismisses the notion that every instance of the
double is necessarily the mark of the uncanny. More precisely, he indicates that the double dates back
to the early mental stage of primary narcissism “in which it wore a more friendly aspect” and gains
importance afterward only due to involuntary repetition throughout life. In adulthood, however, duality
is no longer a friendly, comforting mechanism, but 6 rather “has become a vision of terror” (10). Once
the self is formed, the double assumes a combative relationship in its regard.

Weber emphasizes the paradoxical nature of this epistemological uncertainty. He claims, “Repetition,
duplication, recurrence are inherently ambiguous, even ambivalent processes: they seem to confirm,
even to increase the ‘original’ identity, and yet even more they crease it as its problematical and
paradoxical precondition” (1114). First of all, both Freud and Weber’s observations emphasize the idea
that the double consists of a splitting of the self, rather than two separate entities that come into
contact. Secondly, the sense of divisiveness is ironically amplified due to constant reoccurrence
throughout one’s life. In this context, one could posit the existence of an obscure line between the
 5

“real” and the imagined parts of one’s identity, which, taken together, produce a dreamlike, intangible
quality.

Freud_on_the_Uncanny_A_Tale_of_Two_Theor

A good way to introduce Freud’s theory of the return of the repressed is using the case study by which
Freud first introduces the theory in his essay, Hoffmann’s story of “The Sandman.” Freud’s reading of
“The Sandman” has become well known, and even achieved a degree of notoriety, in literature studies,
which makes it a useful example for me here, because many writers have already drawn attention to its
inadequacies.“The Sandman” tells the tragic tale of a student, Nathanael, who experiences a strange
series of traumatic events, which date back to his childhood—including a mysterious explosion which
kills his father, and falling in love with a mechanical doll, Olympia, having mistaken “her” to be human—
and who, prompted by these events, suffers recurrent bouts of madness.4 These strange events center
on the disturbing figure of the eponymous Sandman, a fabled 3 monster who, it is told, steals away the
eyes of naughty children at night, throwing sand in their eyes so that they “jump out of their head all
bloody” (Hoffmann, p. 185). Nathanael associates the Sandman with two ominous characters who enter
his life at different times—a fearsome lawyer and friend of Nathanael’s father, named Coppelius, whom
he encounters as a child, and a sinister-looking peddler of optical devices, going by the name of Coppola,
whom he encounters as a student. There is a suggestion in the story, which Freud draws our attention
to, that Coppola and Coppelius are one and the same person, and, moreover, that both are somehow
manifestations of the fabled Sandman; but it is unclear whether this may just be a product of
Nathanael’s disturbed imagination. Freud asserts that the “unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness
evoked by the story” attaches primarily to the figure of the Sandman (“U,” p. 227); but he denies that
the effect is caused by uncertainty pertaining to the strange events, or the identities of Coppelius and
Coppola. Hoffmann does, Freud acknowledges, create a “kind of uncertainty in us in the beginning” to
this effect, but claims that this uncertainty dissipates as the story progresses, as Hoffmann supposedly
makes it “quite clear” that Coppelius, Coppola, and the Sandman are in fact identical (“U,” p. 230).

Instead, Freud locates the story’s uncanny effect in the threat posed to Nathanael’s eyes, which is a
theme that recurs throughout the narrative. As a child, Nathanael spies on his father and Coppelius
engaged in some mysterious alchemical operation, and is discovered by Coppelius, who, enraged,
threatens to take Nathanael’s eyes: “‘Now we’ve got eyes—eyes—a beautiful pair of children’s eyes’”
(Hoffmann, p. 188). Years later, when studying abroad, Coppola unexpectedly knocks on Nathanael’s
door at his lodgings and offers to sell him, among his other wares, glass eyes: “‘I got eyes-a too, fine
eyes-a’” (p. 202). It later transpires, in a terrifying moment of revelation, that these are the same “eyes”
that were used in the construction of Nathanael’s beloved, the ingenious “living” doll, Olympia.
According to Freud’s analysis, eyes function in the story as a substitute for Nathanael’s (and,
presumably, the reader’s) repressed Oedipal fear of castration. Coppelius, Coppola, and the Sandman all
represent the “bad” side of Nathanael’s ambivalent attitude towards his father, that is, the father figure
who threatens to castrate him. Such, Freud claims, is the primary source of the story’s uncanny effect.
Many of the writers who have discussed Freud’s reading of “The Sandman” have highlighted how, on
 6

the one hand, his Oedipal interpretation seems implausible, and how, on the other hand, Freud is too
quick to dismiss uncertainty on the reader’s part about the strange, disturbing events—about whether
Coppola really is Coppelius in disguise, and whether both really are in any way connected to the fabled
Sandman—as the cause of its uncanny effect. But before I pursue these lines of enquiry, let me
elaborate the terms of Freud’s return of the repressed at a more general level, and show why I think it
falls short as a theory of the uncanny. According to the theory, the uncanny is the feeling of anxiety that
arises when something repressed in the mind is revived by some impression. To understand the theory,
then, we need to understand three things: we need to understand the nature of the thing that is
repressed, the nature of repression according to the psychoanalytic model, and the manner in which
what is repressed is revived such that it elicits the feeling of the uncanny.

605942

In order to clarify the subject and to give examples of the uncanny situations, Freud refers to E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s story “The Sandman”. He marks that he does not follow Jentsch’s idea that “In telling a
story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating the uncanny effects is to leave the reader in
uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton” (“The Uncanny”,
227). Freud argues that the uncanny atmosphere evoked by the story, does not have any connection
with the theme of the doll Olympia. It is, however, closely related to the theme of the ‘Sand-man” who
tears out children’s eyes (“The Uncanny”, 227). Freud reminds us that “A study of dreams, phantasies
and myths has taught us that anxiety about one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a
substitute for the dread of being castrated” (“The Uncanny”, 231). He sets forth that the protagonist of
the story, Nathaniel’s fear of losing his eyes, is strongly associated with the fear of castration. He also
adds that “elements in the story like these, and many others, seem arbitrary and meaningless so long as
we deny all connection between fears about the eye and castration; but they become intelligible as soon
as we replace the Sand-man by the dreaded father at whose hands castration is expected” (“The
Uncanny”, 232). Freud associates Nathaniel’s father with the Sand-man who tears out children’s eyes,
and therefore he concludes that the uncanny effect of the story stems from “the anxiety belonging to
the castration complex of childhood” (“The Uncanny”, 233)

In the story, several examples of “the double or doppelgänger” convention, which is one of the
representations of the uncanny in literature, can be seen. Fredrik Svenaeus suggests in his article
“Freud’s Philosophy of the Uncanny” that “The uncanniness of Coppelius seems to come precisely from
the uncertainty regarding his identity. He seems to assume the identity of three different characters at
the same time in the story: the sandman, Coppelius the lawyer, and Coppola the optician” (243).
Nathaniel’s father and the lawyer Coppelius are also considered to be doubles of each other. While the
father is associated with the good, Coppelius is associated with the evil. The double in literature
connotes two identical figures, each of them represents completely opposite character traits. The
double convention is associated with the duality in human nature.

Şahin Bektaş, Zehra (1)

 7

In order to clarify the subject and to give examples of the uncanny situations, Freud refers to E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s story “The Sandman”. He marks that he does not follow Jentsch’s idea that “In telling a
story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating the uncanny effects is to leave the reader in
uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton” (“The Uncanny”,
227). Freud argues that the uncanny atmosphere evoked by the story, does not have any connection
with the theme of the doll Olympia. It is, however, closely related to the theme of the ‘Sand-man” who
tears out children’s eyes (“The Uncanny”, 227). Freud reminds us that “A study of dreams, phantasies
and myths has taught us that anxiety about one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a
substitute for the dread of being castrated” (“The Uncanny”, 231). He sets forth that the protagonist of
the story, Nathaniel’s fear of losing his eyes, is strongly associated with the fear of castration. He also
adds that “elements in the story like these, and many others, seem arbitrary and meaningless so long as
we deny all connection between fears about the eye and castration; but they become intelligible as soon
as we replace the Sand-man by the dreaded father at whose hands castration is expected” (“The
Uncanny”, 232). Freud associates Nathaniel’s father with the Sand-man who tears out children’s eyes,
and therefore he concludes that the uncanny effect of the story stems from “the anxiety belonging to
the castration complex of childhood” (“The Uncanny”, 233). In the story, several examples of “the
double or doppelgänger” convention, which is one of the representations of the uncanny in literature,
can be seen. Fredrik Svenaeus suggests in his article “Freud’s Philosophy of the Uncanny” that “The
uncanniness of Coppelius seems to come precisely from the uncertainty regarding his identity. He seems
to assume the identity of three different characters at the same time in the story: the sandman,
Coppelius the lawyer, and Coppola the optician” (243). Nathaniel’s father and the lawyer Coppelius are
also considered to be doubles of each other. While the father is associated with the good, Coppelius is
associated with the evil. The double in literature connotes two identical figures, each of them represents
completely opposite character traits. The double convention is associated with the duality in human
nature.

Agatha Christie___nin __l__m Adas_____nda Tekinsizlik Duygusu[.pdf

The visuality is important to create the uncanny effect in literature. The uncanny occurs especially when
an individual or a character in a literary work comes to encounter his/her own “self” in the form of a
double or any kind of visual image, may it be an apparition, reflection or a portrait. In literature, it is
possible to find a myriad of examples of the uncanny and its motifs, especially in late-Victorian fiction.
Since the uncanny has to do with death, doubles, estrangement towards the self, repression of certain
experiences and/or feelings, it offers a great deal of material for literary works. The uncanny experience
comes into existence through certain motifs; one of the most common motifs of the uncanny in
literature is that of the double, also often called doppelgänger. Rosemary Jackson explains that the
German word doppelgänger means “double-goer” or “walker”, and it was first used by Hoffman with the
meaning of double or dual (108). The double in a literary work usually bears a strong, sometimes even
identical, resemblance to a character; sometimes the double can be observed to parallel the character’s
personal traits, situation and so on. The double is usually portrayed to be the result of a fragmentation
of the self-due to the repression caused by the pressing dictates of the society or the psychological
 8

effect of a traumatic experience. As Freud suggests, the double as a literary motif has to do with
“mirrors, with shadows, guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and the fear of death” (“The
Uncanny”, 235). Freud considers the double as the “insurance against destruction of the ego” (“The
Uncanny”, 235). What he means by this is that the individual ends up fragmenting his/her self and
creates two separate selves, one of which allows him/her to appear the way the society expects them to
appear, while the other is shaped by their repressed traits and inner desires. Mostly, the individual tries
to keep the latter hidden, away from sight, thus sweeping the unaccepted into the unconscious.
Rosemary Jackson asserts that “The double signifies a desire to be reunited with a lost centre of
personality” (108). As a kind of defence mechanism, creating a double identity helps the individual to
reconcile his inner desires with the societal expectations and go on with their life. As Freud suggests, the
double results from the return of the infantile material which is repressed and the primary source of
creating a double is the narcissism of the child by means of which projections of multiple selves are
created. When these created selves are encountered later, the uncanny 13 experience of returning to a
primitive state is felt. With regard to this, Freud points out that “when the primary narcissism stage has
been surmounted, ‘the double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it
becomes the uncanny harbinger of death” (“The Uncanny”, 235). What he means by “harbinger of
death” can be interpreted as the annihilation of the self. When the created self, the double, becomes
dominant on the self and starts to control its actions, it results in the destruction of the real identity.

The tradition of double in literature can be divided into several categories such as evil twin, shadow,
ghosts and apparitions, two different persons bearing the same name, a person’s past or future self.
When examined, it can be seen that the doppelgänger as a literary device serves a range of different
purposes in literature. Firstly, it can be used to portray the “other” self of a character which may help
the reader to explore the character’s darker/brighter side. Hence, the portrayal of a character can be
reinforced in complexity, depth and dimension. Secondly, the doppelgänger can play a significant role in
terms of plot structure, either raising a climactic point or leading to the resolution of a conflict. The
doppelgänger adds subdimensions and helps the story develop in a multi-layered form. Freud also thinks
that man’s attitude towards death and dead bodies create an uncanny effect. He suggests that
“insufficient scientific knowledge about death” and “old belief that the dead man becomes the enemy of
his survivor and seeks to carry him off to share his new life with him” drags people into a feeling of the
uncanny (“The Uncanny”, 242). He also adds that “the primitive fear of the dead is still so strong within
us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation (“The Uncanny”, 242). Even if the
educated people do not believe that the dead may appear to them as ghosts or spirits, they breed a
feeling of the uncanny due to their repressed fear of death. Weird coincidences and involuntary
repetitions are also considered as the uncanny experiences. Freud exemplifies this type of the uncanny
as follows: “if we come across the number 62 several times in a single day, or if we begin to notice that
everything which has a number-addresses, hotel rooms, compartments in railway 14 trains-invariably
has the same one, or at all events one which contains the same figures. We do feel this to be the
uncanny” (“The Uncanny”, 238). In the same manner, thinking about someone whom you have not
heard of for a long time and coming across with him on the same day is another example of the uncanny
feeling of coincidences. Freud relates this kind of the uncanny experience with the infantile psychology
and “compulsion to repeat,” which is directly connected with the unconscious and childhood traumas.
The thing that is repeated is considered to be the result of the process of repression.
 9

Apart from these, there are other features such as omnipotence of thoughts, dread of the evil eye,
animism, and fulfilment of unrealistic wishes and silence, darkness and solitude which create the
uncanny effect in literary works and real life as well. Related to this kind of the uncanny, Freud’s
explanation is that;

we---or our primitive forefathers---once believed that these possibilities were realities, and were
convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays we no longer believe in them, we have surmounted
these modes of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and the old ones still exist
within us ready to seize upon any confirmation. As soon as something actually happens in our lives
which seem to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny. (“The Uncanny”, 248)

Human beings who are able to free themselves from these kinds of animistic beliefs, do not experience
this type of the uncanny feeling, Freud adds. Silence, darkness and solitude belong to the type of the
uncanny which bothers most of the human beings as repressed infantile complexes. At the end of his
study, Freud reaches the conclusion that the uncanny experience occurs in two ways: “an the uncanny
experience occurs either when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by
some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more to be
confirmed” (“The Uncanny”, 249). Once again, it is confirmed that Freudian understanding of the
uncanny is closely related to repression of childhood syndromes and surpassed primitive animistic
beliefs that are awakened by a random stimulant. As a psychologist, it is still a matter of curiosity why
Freud chose a subject from the aesthetics as the discussion of his study. Derrida mentions in his Writing
and Difference that “Freud loved the arts and (literature, poetry, music) and this essay is an example of
how he uses them to affirm and describe his ideas. The most obvious example of this process in his
writing is the Oedipus complex” (qtd. in Noam Israeli, 383). It is apparent that Freud enjoyed arts and
borrowed from its notions while naming his psychological concepts. Besides his interest towards art,
Freud may intentionally choose his subjects from aesthetics as both literature and psychoanalysis search
for the hidden and implicit meanings. Portier points out why Freud made a detailed study on the
uncanny and why it was of great importance to him as follows:

Freud’s understanding of modern human psychology and the psychoanalytic process relies on the
uncanny. The “talking cure” is intended to call to light that which is simultaneously hidden but central to
the patient’s hysteria or other psychological condition. The patient must experience the uncanny to
break through and set foot on the path towards a cure. This is one explanation for why Freud took up
the uncanny as the subject of an essay despite his claim that he does not normally deal with problems of
aesthetics.