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FREUD'S FIRST ESSAY ON THE PARANOID process, in which he introduced the term projection, became the starting point of all subsequent theoretical explorations of the subject within the psychoanalytic tradition. It also foreshadows the present argument since the most prominent feature of the case he presented suffered from a failure in "the act of secrecy". The thirty-two year old Frau P had slowly grown more suspicious and distrustful until, "one afternoon she suddenly got the idea that people watched her undressing at night. From that time onwards she employed the most complicated precautions when undressing, slipping into the bed in the dark and undressing under the bedclothes" (1896, p. 171).
This paper elaborates the notion that certain forms of paranoid experience arise through a failure in "the act of secrecy", an idea first put forward by Janet about sixty years ago (Ellenberger, 1970, p. 390).
What is being proposed here should not be seen as an alternative to the prevailing theoretical viewpoint, which has been comprehensively reviewed by Meissner (1978) but as a parallel and potentially linked system of causation. Freud himself touched upon certain essential elements of this system.
Many years after making his first contribution to the theory of the paranoid process, Freud wrote a long essay on "The Uncanny" (1919), an experience which he clearly considered to be important but which he was unable to place within the existing theoretical framework. The uncanny is central to the following argument.
Apparently independently, Sullivan (1953) also came upon the significance of the uncanny, making it the basis of his understanding of the paranoid process. His work is essential to the thesis developed here. However, the system which he describes is somewhat