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The (( Uncanny J) our discussion of fantasies to the problems of can guess two of the methods used by this tech- poetical effects. nique. The writer softens the character of his ego- You will remember how I have said that the istic daydreams by altering and disguising it, and daydreamer carefully conceals his fantasies from he bribes us by the purely formal- that is, aes- other people because he feels he has reasons for thetic - yield of pleasure which he offers us in being ashamed of them. I should now add that the presentation of his fantasies. We give the even if he were to communicate them to us he name of an incentive bonlls, or aforepleasure, to could give us no pleasure by his disclosures. Such a yield of pleasure such as this, which is offered fantasies, when we learn them, repel us or at least to us so as to make possible the release of still leave us cold. But when a creative writer presents greater pleasure arising from deeper psychical his plays to us or tells us what we are inclined to sources. In my opinion, all the aesthetic pleasure take to be his personal daydreams, we experience which a creative writer affords us has the charac- a great pleasure, and one which probably arises ter of a forepleasure of this kind, and our actual from the confluence of many sources. How the enjoyment of an imaginative work proceeds from writer accomplishes this is his innermost secret; a liberation of tensions in our minds. It may even the essential ars poetica3 lies in the technique of be that not a little of this effect is due to the overcoming the feeling of repulsion in us which writer's enabling us thenceforward to enjoy our is undoubtedly connected with the barriers that own daydreams without self-reproach or shame. rise between each single ego and the others. We This brings us to the threshold of new, interest- ing, and complicated inquiries; but also, at least J Art of poetry. for the moment, to the end of our discussion. The (( Uncanny J) 1 frightening - to what arouses dread and horror; It is only rarely that a psycho-analyst feels equally certainlY, too, the word is not always used impelled to investigate the subject of aesthetics, in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to even when aesthetics is understood to mean not coincide with what excites fear in general. Yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is pre- merely the theory of beauty but the theory of the sent which justifies the use of a special concep- qualities of feeling. He works in other strata of tual term. One is curious to know what this mental life and has little to do with the subdued common core is which allows us to distinguish as emotional impulses which, inhibited in their aims "uncanny" certain things which lie within the and dependent on a host of concurrent factors, field of what is frightening. usually furnish the material for the study of aes- As good as nothing is to be found upon this theti.cs. But it does occasionally happen that he has to interest himself in some particular province subject in comprehensive treatises on aesthetics, of that subject; and this province usually proves which in general prefer to concern themselves to be a rather remote one, and one which has been with what is beautiful, attractive and sublime- that is, with feelings of a positive nature - and neglected in the specialist literature of aesthetics. The subject of the "uncanny"! is a province of with the circnmstances and the objects that call them forth, rather than with the opposite feelings this kind. It is undoubtedly related to what is Translated by James Strachey. 'The German word, translated throughout this paper by The EngHsh term is not, of course, an exact equivalent of the the English "uncanny," is "llnheimlich." literally "unhomely." German one. [Tr.l SIGMUND FREUD - ... - --- --------- of repulsion and distress. I know of only one The German word unheimlich is obviously attempt in medico-psychological literature, a fer- the opposite of heimlich [homely], heimisch tile but not exhaustive paper by Jentsch (I906). [native]- the opposite of what is familiar; and But I must confess that I have not made a very we are tempted to conclude that what is thorough examination of the literature, especially "uncanny" is frightening precisely because it is the foreign literature, relating to this present mod- /lot known and familiar. Naturally not everything est contribution of mine, for reasons which, as that is new and unfamiliar is frightening, however; may easily be guessed, lie in the times in which the relation is not capable of inversion. We can we live;2 so that my paper is presented to the only say that what is novel can easily become reader without any claim to priority. frightening and uncanny; some new things are In his study of the "uncanny" Jentsch quite frightening but not by any means all. Something rightly lays stress on the obstacle presented by the has to be added to what is novel ant! unfamiliar in fact that people vary so very greatly in their sen- order to make it uncanny. sitivity to this quality of feeling. The writer of the On the whole, Jentsch did not get beyond this present contribution, indeed, must himself plead relation of the uncanny to the novel and unfamil- guilty to a special obtuseness in the matter, where iar. He ascribes the essential factor in the produc- extreme delicacy of perception would be more in tion of the feeling of uncanniness to intellectual place. It is long since he has experienced or heard uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always, as of anything which has given him an uncanny it were, be something one does not know one's impression, and he must start by translating him- way about in. The better orientated in his envi- self into that state of feeling, by awakening in ronment a person is, the less readily will he get himself the possibility of experiencing it. Still, the impression of something uncanny in regard to such difficulties make themselves powerfully felt the objects and events in it. in many other branches of aesthetics; we need not It is not difficult to see that this definition is on that account despair of finding instances in incomplete, and we will therefore try to proceed which the quality in question will be unhesitat- beyond the equation "uncanny" = "unfamiliar." ingl y recognized by most people. We will first tum to other languages. But the dic- Two courses are open to us at the outset. Either tionaries that we consult tell us nothing new, per- we can find out what meaning has come to be haps only because we ourselves speak a language attached to the word "uncanny" in the course of that is foreign. Indeed, we get an impression that its history; or we can collect all those properties many languages are without a word for this par- of persons, things, sense-impressions, experi- ticular shade of what is frightening. ences and situations which arouse in us the feel- I should like to express my indebtedness ing of uncanniness, and then infer the unknown to Dr. Theodor Reik for the following excerpts: - nature of the uncanny from what all these exam- LATIN: (K. E. Georges, Deutschlateinisches ples have in common. I will say at once that both Worterbuch, r898). An uncanny place: locus sus- courses lead to the same result: the uncanny is pectus; at an uncanny time of night: intempesta that class of the frightening which leads back to nocte. what is known of old and long familiar. How this GREEK: (Rost's and Schenkl's Lexikons). is possible, in what circumstances the famiJjar GS)Jo( (i.e. strange, foreign). can become uncanny and frightening, I shall ENGLISH: (from the dictionaries of Lucas, Bel- show in what follows. Let me also add that my lows, FlUgel and Muret-Sanders). Uncomfortable, investigation was actually begun by collecting a uneasy, gloomy, dismal, uncanny, ghastly; (of a number of individual cases, and was only later house) haunted; (of a man) a repulsive fellow. confirmed by an examination of linguistic usage. FRENCH: (Sach-Villatte). inquietant, sin istre, In this discussion, however, I shall follow the lugubre, mal a son aise. reverse course. SPANISH: (Tollhausen, I889). Sospechoso, de mal aguero, iLigubre, siniestro. The Italian and Portuguese languages seem to 'An allusion to the first World War only just concluded. [Tf.l content themselves with words which we should THE "UNCANNY" 515 describe as circumlocutions. In Arabic and heimlich." "The protestant land-owners do not feel Hebrew "uncanny" means the same as ... heimlich among their catholic inferiors." "When "demonic," "gruesome." it grows heimlich and still, and the evening quiet Let us therefore return to the German lan- alone watches over your cell." "Quiet, lovely and heimlich, no place more fitted for their rest." "He guage. In Daniel Sanders's Worterbuch del' did not feel at all heimlich about it." - Also, [in Deutsche,: Sprache (r860, I, 729), the following compounds] "The place was so peaceful, so lonely, entry, whIch I here reproduce in full, is to be so shadily-heimlich." "The in- and outflowin<Y found under the word "heimlich." I have laid waves of the current, dreamy and lullaby-heimlich.';; stress on one or two passages by italicizing them.3 Cf. in especial Unheimlich [see below]. Among Swabian Swiss authors in especial, often as a trisyl- Heimlich, adj., subst. Heimlichkeit (pI. Heim- lable; "How heimelich it seemed to Ivo again of an liclzkeiten): 1.
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