Changes

In "[[The Uncanny]]" [[Freud]] seeks to explain the [[feeling ]] of uncanniness.

[[Freud]] attibutes the feeling to a [[repressed ]] [[infantile ]] [[complex ]] that has been revived.

Hoffman's "The Sandman" describes the [[figure ]] of the Sandman who steals the eyes of [[children]].

The [[sense ]] of uncanniness arises from that which is both fearful and frightening.

[[Freud]]'s short essay on the [[uncanny]] is an important landmark in the [[history]] of [[psychoanalytic criticism]], not least in that it moves away from the [[analysis ]] of [[author]]s and introduces a thematic [[reading ]] of works of [[literature]] that provoke a sense of dread, unease or [[horror]] in the reader.

He interprets [[them ]] as an expression of the [[male ]] conviction that there is something [[uncanny]] or threatening [[about ]] the [[female ]] genitals.

According to [[Freud]], the feeling of dread arises because the [[uncanny]] (''[[unheimlich]]'') is also familiar or homely (''heimlich'').

The ''unheimlich'' is the entrance - the [[maternal ]] genitals - to the original [[human ]] home or ''Heimat''.

[[Freud]]'s argument is underpinned by the philological [[theory ]] that certain [[primal ]] [[words ]] have antithetical [[meanings ]] and by the observation that [[dream]]s often use a single [[image]] to express contraries.

[[Freud]] claims that the seeming antonyms ''heimlich'' and ''unheimlich'' are in fact synonyms adn that they prove that [[primitive ]] elements still survive in the [[unconscious]].

The [[encounter ]] with the [[uncanny]] thus relates to the rediscovery of something that is very ancient in both [[individual ]] and historical [[terms]].

[[Freud]] develops this [[concept ]] with references to 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 Unheimliche is connected with the [[anxiety ]] associated with the [[return of the repressed]]

It represents an exemplary effort at combining literature and [[psychoanalysis]].

Freud helps establish his [[thesis ]] on the basis of the study of works of literature.

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