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When Sigmund [[Freud]]'s essay "The [[Uncanny]]" appeared in 1919, he had already made a reference to the Unheimliche, in [[Totem ]] and [[Taboo ]] (1912-1913a), as well as bringing up the "omnipotence of [[thought]]." This shows that the question had interested Freud for some [[time]]. Here there are passages on [[repetition ]] [[compulsion ]] as well that foreshadow Beyond the [[Pleasure ]] [[Principle]], which was published a year later (1920g). A [[forum ]] for intersecting propositions, the essay is also a [[compendium ]] of references (Ernst Jentsch, Friedrich von Schiller, Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann) and yet, Freud does not reference the [[psychoanalytic ]] [[literature ]] on related topics, such as Pierre Janet's déjà-vu, or Joseph Capgras's [[illusion ]] of the double.

To establish his evasive [[concept]], Freud follows two approaches at the same time: etymology and [[linguistic ]] variants, and observations or [[fantasies ]] that appear in novels. The [[French]], [[English]], and Spanish translations of [[unheimlich ]] all fail to recapitulate the principal reference to the familiar, or [[family ]] (heim, or home), which defines and limits the [[notion ]] of the uncanny.

Das Unheimliche is defined as "that [[particular ]] variety of [[terror ]] that relates to what has been known for a long time, has been familiar for a long time." We are presented at once with a [[paradox ]] that Freud does [[nothing ]] to alleviate since the familiar should not be disquieting. This proposition is at the heart of Freud's [[ideas ]] [[about ]] the original pleasure-ego that coincides with the [[good ]] and rejects the bad. In "[[Instincts ]] and their Vicissitudes" (1915c), we find the same opposition between ego/non-ego, just as we do in "[[Negation]]" (1925h). Still, it is not clear why the familiar should be threatening and therefore, a second element is needed, namely, the [[secret]], the hidden, which gives rise to the notion of hostility and [[danger]]. For danger is associated with penetrating what is sealed off, and strangeness—based on an [[idea ]] Freud borrowed from von Schilling—with the revelation of what should by rights remain hidden because it is the bearer of [[transgression]].

To these linguistic and [[fantasy ]] [[associations]], Freud, in the second part of the essay, introduces a [[number ]] of [[literary ]] examples (many from Hoffmann), centered primarily on the [[intellectual ]] uncertainty over whether something is [[living ]] or not (from Jentsch). There it is shown how the [[repetition compulsion ]] manifests itself through the [[return ]] of the [[repressed]]. This is [[true ]] even in situations where we expect the new and with it the return of the [[dead ]] to [[life]].

The theme of the double, developed by Otto Rank, whom Freud [[quotes]], is a source of [[ambivalence]]: the assurance of survival and a harbinger of [[death]]. Consequently, the Unheimliche is connected with the [[anxiety ]] associated with the [[return of the repressed ]] and with this the concept receives considerable scope: "With [[animism]], [[magic]], sorcery, the omnipotence of thought, unintentional repetition, and the [[castration ]] [[complex]], we have for the most part examined all the factors that transform anxiety into the uncanny."

This essay is certainly one of the most fecund, if not one of the most confused, written by Freud. It represents an exemplary effort at combining literature and [[psychoanalysis]], for Freud helps establish his [[thesis ]] on the basis of the study of works of literature. The [[concepts ]] of anxiety associated with the foreign (René Spitz) and the secret (Piera Aulagnier) have been the [[subject ]] of research that does not directly extend Freud's [[work]]. However, examination of the supernatural ([[telepathy]], for example) and the [[analysis ]] of literature based on the "anxiety of [[fiction]]" (Mijolla-Mellor) are directly related to Freud's study of the uncanny.

# [[Freud, Sigmund]]. (1919h). Das Unheimliche. [[Imago]], 5: 297-324;GW, 12: 229-268;The "uncanny," SE, 17: 217-256.