The Psycho-Analysis of the Uncanny

Freud describes the uncanny as a special variety of the fearful, 1 and he differentiates two types of uncanny feeling. (a) The one, he says, is produced when some impression revives repressed infantile complexes and (b) the other when the primitive beliefs we have surmounted seem once more to be confirmed.

In practical experience the two types of uncanny feeling cannot always be clearly distinguished, for primitive convictions are most intimately connected with infantile complexes and are, in fact, derived from them. The uncanny, he says, is a hidden, familiar2 thing that has undergone repression and then emerged from it.

Let us take the uncanny in connection with the omnipotence of thoughts, instantaneous wish-fulfilments, secret power to do harm and the return of the dead. The condition under which the feeling of uncanniness arises here is unmistakable. We—or our primitive forefathers—once believed in the possibility of these things and were convinced that they really happened. Nowadays we no longer believe in them, we have surmounted such ways of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new set of 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 seems to support the old discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny; and it is as though we were making a judgement something like this: "So, after all, it is true that one can kill a person by merely desiring his death!" or, "Then the dead do continue to live and appear before our eyes on the scene of their former activities!" and so on. And conversely, he who has completely and finally dispelled animistic beliefs in himself will be insensible to this type of the uncanny. The most remarkable coincidences of desire and fulfilment, the most mysterious recurrence of similar experiences in a particular place or on a particular date, the most deceptive sights and suspicious noises—none of these things will take h