The Uncanny

“The real enjoyment of a literary work derives from the relaxation of tensions in our minds. Maybe this effect is due in no small measure to the fact that the writer enables us, from now on, to enjoy our own fantasies without shame or self-reproach.”

This much-cited passage has been disputed by literary critics, but has also had an undeniable impact on subsequent literary analysis. Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and I.A. Richards are examples of influential critics who were themselves responding directly to Freud’s claims about the relation of literature to the unconscious. Freudian readings not only incorporated Freud’s ideas, such as the theory of the unconscious or the Oedipal Complex, but also the conventions of psychoanalytic practice. In his book Practical Criticism, Richards advocated cultivating a “third ear” and an evenly “hovering” attention for literature, in much the same way that a Freudian analyst would listen for the anomalies in his patients’ speech. 

“The child’s overestimation of his parents is thus retained in the dreams of the normal adult.”

Freud claims that the early system for comprehending the world established by the infant is retained by the adult, albeit in a more sophisticated and repressed state. It is this equivalence between childhood experiences and adult behavior that has caused such controversy ever since its submission by Freud. The germs of what would be transformed in the work of Carl Jung and his theory of archetypes are discernible in this 1909 essay of Freud’s. 

“The drive can operate freely in the service of intellectual curiosity.”

If Freud comes close to comprehending the source of da Vinci’s remarkable genius, it is in Freud’s analysis of the origins of Leonardo’s unadulterated investigative drive. Freud claims that Leonardo was able to sublimate his sexual drive into his intellectual curiosity, such that it was untethered to infantile sexual development and unfettered by neurosis. According to Freud, Leonardo managed to effect the purest possible resolution to the necessary phase of sexual repression: the sublimation of the libido. 

“Hidden behind these residual memories, which he does not himself understand, there are as a rule priceless pieces of evidence about the most significant features of his mental development.”

In this passage, Freud summarizes his motives for selecting the most bizarre details of his subjects’ stories as his focus. The function of repression is to encode the most challenging experiences of the subject in palatable terms. Freud’s analysis of the significance of da Vinci’s vulture memory and his obsessional accounting is revelatory of the unconscious processes in operation in da Vinci. As elsewhere, the link between unconscious phantasy and the creative imagination inevitably links Freudian analysis with literary analysis.

“[…] aesthetics is understood to mean not merely the theory of beauty, but the theory of the qualities of feeling.”

In the opening clauses of his essay on the uncanny, Freud establishes an intrinsic link between theories of the psyche and aesthetics (and more specifically literary criticism), which he goes on to expound upon during the course of the essay. Unlike the literary critic, though, Freud is motivated to consider not only that which produces pleasurable feelings but also feelings that are less enjoyable, such as dread and horror. Some literary precedents do exist for this interest in the Gothic and Romantic genres of literature, both of which deal with the concept of the “sublime,” which Freud mentions at the beginning of the essay.

The sublime was defined by British philosopher Edmund Burke in 1757 as “whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger […] or operates in a manner analogous to terror.” Burke also believed there is an inherent pleasure in the excitation of these potent emotions. German philosopher Immanuel Kant qualified this definition of the sublime in The Critique of Judgement (1790). Kant’s conception of the aesthetic bears striking resemblance to Freud’s conception of the uncanny as that which elicits “intellectual uncertainty”: the beautiful for Kant is a “presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason.” 

“The ‘uncanny’ is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar.”

Freud’s discussion of the semantics of the terms heimlich and unheimlich (the former meaning “homey” and “familiar”) in German is central to his notion of the uncanny. Freud argues that this concept of the uncanny does not simply refer to the unfamiliar, however. Through etymologies provided by Th.Reik, Freud associates the uncanny within 19th-century Gothicism. It is the ambivalence of the term that makes it so productive for Freud in his explication of the uncanny in literature.

“On the one hand, it means that which is familiar and congenial, and on the other, that which is concealed and kept out of sight.”

This quality of ambivalence is essential to Freud’s definition of the uncanny. Much as the uncanny denotes both the familiar and the hidden, so Freud’s conception of the human psyche is premised on the existence of an unconscious. For this reason, Freudian psychoanalysis is reliant upon semi-conscious phenomena like dreams as a means of gaining access to the unconscious convolutions of the individual. This is also a key reason why Freud is so interested in works of literature and art, which similarly place the conscious realm of the psyche in communication with the unconscious. Literary characters, like real-life individuals, are conflicted and often behave in irrational ways. For Freud, this is because of the existence of the unconscious. It is another reason why art is so important as a way for what Freud would call a “civilized” society to gain consciousness of and heal itself from its unconscious conflicts. 

“[…] that which is obscure, inaccessible to knowledge.”

Repression is integral to Freud’s definition of the uncanny, and his thought in general. This is because that which comes to light that shouldn’t are neurotic, obsessional, and perverse symptoms experienced in adulthood that are rooted in childhood traumas, according to Freud. Repression is an unconscious tool used by the ego to prevent disturbing thoughts or memories from becoming conscious.

The word “canny” derives from the Anglo-Saxon root word ken, which means knowledge, understanding, or cognizance. This etymological root is retained in the French word connaitre, and the English “connote.” The term ken also has to do with mental perception, as in the sense of “an idea beyond one's ken." Intrinsic to the definition of knowledge, then, is the familial, or familiar. The uncanny therefore has to do with reality-testing, with questions of ontology. 

“Thus unheimlich is a word the meaning of which develops towards an ambivalence, until it finally coincides with its opposite, unheimlich.”

Freud conceptualizes of the term heimlich as though it were a vector which, in extremis, aligns with its opposite. The ingredients that Jacques Lacan later distilled in to his algebraic representations of the human psyche are discernible in Freud’s almost mathematical definition of the term here. Locating the uncanny on the uncertain ground of this “shadowy” or ambiguous word echoes the aforementioned notion of the sublime. The concept of the sublime appears in Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke, and the Gothic literature upon which Freud substantiates his ideas. 

“Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of heimlich.”

Though reason would have the prefix “un” transform heimlich into its opposite, both terms share the same root. This is essential to Freud’s notion of the uncanny. This is because were the knowledge truly alien, it would remain unintelligible. It is due to the commonality at some level of the known or familiar and the unheimlich that the uncanny effect is produced. This does not diminish the “intellectual uncertainty” involved in the uncanny, which entails a vacillation between rationality and an apparently alternative source of knowledge (the unconscious). The uncanny is therefore a fundamentally irrational experience. 

“Doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not in fact be animate.”

In line with the definitions of the unheimlich given in Grimm’s dictionary and by Schelling and Klinger, the uncanny has to do with the occult, with ghosts and otherworldliness. The notion of “wax-work figures, artificial dolls and automatons” will resurface at several points in Freud’s essay. The work of the aesthetician, or writer of fiction, is thus closely bound up with the uncanny mimicry of life.

“The main theme of the story […] always reintroduces at the critical moment: it is the theme of the Sand-Man who tears out children’s eyes.”

In contrast with Jensch’s theory about the operation of the uncanny in Hoffman’s “The Sandman,” for Freud, the locus of the uncanny in the story is in the threat of sightlessness, rather than the figure of the animate doll, Olympia. Freud’s understanding of the functioning of the uncanny, then, is structural. The uncanny in the Hoffmann story transcends the parameters of the story itself and transfers the anxiety of the principal character to the reader. Freud shows how the fear of losing one’s eyes echoes in both Nathaniel’s bouts of madness and the aesthetic arrangement of the story itself. 

“[…] his mother, it is true, denied that such a person existed except as a form of speech […].”

The linguistic element of the Sand-Man’s uncanny power is instrumental in Freud’s reading of Hoffmann. Uncanny feelings are precisely transmitted by means of literary devices, as Freud shows by focusing his reading not on the figure of Olympia but on the recurrent motif of the Sand-Man and the recurrent theme of phobia of damage to one’s eyes. Freud owns a mistrust of writers, who are able to manipulate their readers.

“Hoffmann already leaves us in doubt whether we are witnessing the first delirium of the panic-stricken boy, or a succession of events which are to be regarded in the story as being real.”

The “intellectual uncertainty” upon which Freud pins his definition of the uncanny via Hoffmann also has to do with disorientation. Freud gives the example of inadvertently returning multiple times to the red-light district of a certain town. The introduction of uncertainty as a narrative device to unbalance the reader is common to Horace Walpole’s classic Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto, which opens with the uncanny death of Conrad by a falling helmet. The castle may be likened to the psyche, haunted, to use Freud’s phrase, by the ghosts of “infantile morbid anxiety.”  

“[…] the substitutive relation between the eye and the male member which is seen to exist in dreams and myths and fantasies.”

For Freud, sexual impulses lay behind many human behaviors. They are often repressed and thus encoded by the unconscious mind, appearing in all manner of guises in the phantasy of the individual. Freud argues that the preciousness of an eye does not of itself justify the dread that his clinical patients feel in relation to potential damage to their eyes. The castration complex is one of the earliest of Freud’s theories and also takes place early in the development of a child, between the ages of 3 and 5. The anxiety arises, according to Freud, because the child desires their opposite-sex parent sexually (a desire that is repressed), and fears retributive violence to their sexual organs from their same-sex parent.

The female infant in contrast experiences “penis envy” during this “phallic stage” of development. Female children envy their male counterparts’ penises, Freud argued, because they presume that theirs has been taken from them. So while the male child fears castration, the female assumes that they have already been castrated. Freud wrote about this in a 1908 paper entitled “On the Sexual Theories of Children.” Freud has been criticized for normalizing the male experience and minimizing that of the female. His disciple, Carl Jung, popularized the concept of the Electra Complex, an experience equivalent to the castration complex but in female children. 

“She, an automatic doll, can be nothing else than a personification of Nathaniel’s feminine attitude towards his father in his infancy.”

In a note, Freud dives deeper into the details of Hoffman’s story. He argues that Olympia, the lifelike doll with whom Nathaniel falls in love, is a kind of narcissistic double for the disturbed protagonist. Since the story takes place in the fantasy of this madman, all of the characters are in truth components of his inner world. The resonance between the Sandman, his father, Coppelius, and Spalanzani is created by the sense of threat that they all arouse in him. Freud links this with the ambivalent relation to the father-imago experienced by a male child in the midst of the phallic phase of development, during which they work through their castration complex. Thus the sudden love he feels for Olympia, for whom he gives up his real fiancée, is a projection of Nathaniel’s dissociated feminine counterpart. 

“For the ‘double’ was originally an insurance against destruction to the ego.”

Otto Rank’s notion that the double is an “energetic denial of the power of death,” or an attempt to insure the ego against destruction is an important concept in Freud’s theories about trauma. In addition to this infantile function of the double, there is a spiritual division, Freud argues, between the “immortal” soul and the “double” of the body.

Freud’s understanding of the uncanny is intrinsically tied to his theory of the unconscious. The human being cannot fathom the depths of their unconscious, nor can their unconscious comprehend the reality of death. This is a point to which Freud returns at the close of the essay, in order to explain the importance of literature as a means of restructuring reality. 

“From having been an assurance of immortality, he becomes a ghastly harbinger of death.”

Freud builds on Rank’s ideas about the double as safeguard, arguing that in the language of dreams, castration anxiety (a central concern for Freud) is represented via a doubling, or multiplication of the “genital symbol.” Though the double was comforting to early, “primitive” civilizations, Freud claims, in more sophisticated societies, the double becomes a signifier for and reminder of death. 

“Thus we see how independent emotional effects can be of the actual subject matter in the world of fiction.”

Freud takes the example of the entertaining and hardly-threatening Canterville ghost of Oscar Wilde’s eponymous novel to show that the work of fiction by definition affords writers the opportunity to alter reality for their readers. Fairy tales arouse no fear, Freud argues, because the conventions of the genre curtail uncanny experiences. Since subject matter is at times almost entirely independent from the emotional effects in a piece of writing, literature is akin to dreaming in its functioning.

This is a parallel that Freud explores at length in “The Creative Writer and Daydreaming.” Here, he suggests that the psychic enjoyment of a piece of literature is due to the liberation of tensions within the psyche of author and readership. Humans are subject to numerous limitations to fulfilling their wishes due to socialization, leading to suppression. According to Freud, there are three opportunities for the expression of these desires: sex, slips of the tongue, and writing. Freud also further divides the artistic creation process into three stages: condensation, latency, and substitution or symbolization. Only in the third is the psychic expressed in language. 

“[…] It is only this factor of involuntary repetition which surrounds with an uncanny atmosphere what would otherwise be innocent enough, and forces upon us the idea of something fateful and inescapable where otherwise we should have spoke of ‘chance’ only.”

Freud mentions fate only in passing in his essay on the uncanny. Yet the topic recurs in literature, religion, and philosophy. The concept is central to Greek (and subsequent) tragedy, in which the protagonist’s enterprise is thwarted by their “hubris,” or “fatal flaw.” Freud’s thinking was so enmeshed with such ideas that he named the famous Oedipal Complex after Oedipus Rex, the Sophoclean king who comes to blindly fulfill the prophecy made at his birth. Aristotle refers to the play in his seminal work on aesthetics, the Poetics, in which he argues that the play is the perfect example of tragedy because it causes the audience to undergo an accompanying catharsis. 

“It may be true that the uncanny is nothing else than a hidden, familiar thing that has undergone repression and then emerged from it, and that everything that is uncanny fulfills this condition.”

Freud brings his essay on the uncanny full circle by pointing out that the term heimlich is located at a at a semantic chiasmus. In extremis, the term heimlich comes to mean its opposite. The recurrence of familiar (heimlich), repressed (unheimlich) material is at the crux of Freud’s definition of the uncanny. The notions of “hidden” and “visible” resurface in Freud when he talks about the unconscious, using the metaphor of an iceberg. The majority of an iceberg, he says, is invisible, for it lies beneath the surface of the sea. So, too, is the majority of the human mind inaccessible. The conscious mind is only that part of the human being that is above the surface, or visible. Freud’s idea that man is essentially unintelligible is a radical one. Yet it is this hypothesis (of the existence of an unconscious) that leads Freud to place emphasis on uncanny experiences, dreams, and literature as bridges to a greater understanding of ourselves.

“[…] he who has completely and finally dispelled animistic beliefs in himself, will be insensible to this type of the uncanny.”

The uncanny as a product of apparent animism, or the magical predominance of thoughts and will over the world, is disabled when we resist making recourse to such arcane animistic beliefs. Despite the centrality of literary analysis to Freud’s thought and the many parallels between literary analysis and psychoanalysis, this point is one of the major points of difference between Freud and his disciple, Carl Jung. While Freud was concerned with establishing psychoanalysis as a science of the psyche, Jung placed far greater emphasis on the recurrence of familiar tropes in myth, religion, and art. Jung’s “archetypes” are recurrent narrative characters that resurface as part of what Jung famously called the “collective unconscious” in his 1916 essay, "The Structure of the Unconscious.” 

“[…] the story-teller has a peculiarly directive influence over us; by means of the states of mind into which he can put us and the expectations he can rouse in us, he is able to guide the current of our emotions […].”

Freud here takes a distinctly Aristotelian approach to critiquing a work of literature. Aristotle, in Poetics, he writes:

“Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation [catharsis] of these emotions.”

The plasticity of the aesthetic, then, that ability of the artist to reconfigure the world, is responsible for their power. The storyteller grips us with their affective power, which touches us more deeply and more potently by addressing the less-conscious aspects of ourselves. New Criticism, a school of literary analysis that arose in the 1950s, both drew on and responded to Freudian psychoanalysis. The term “affective fallacy” was used by the members of this school to refer to erroneous readings of literature based on its emotional effects on a reader.