Freud_on_the_Uncanny_A_Tale_of_Two_Theor

If return of the repressed fails to get us closer to understanding the nature of the uncanny, what about
the other explanation that Freud offers, surmounted primitive beliefs? According to this theory, we all
inherit, both from our individual and collective past, which is to say, both on an ontogenetic and a
phylogenetic level, “primitive” beliefs in magical and animistic phenomena, such as that thoughts can
have unmediated causal effects on reality, spirits inhabit the world, “life” continues after death, the
“dead” can return to the living, and so on. Freud discusses these kinds of phenomena at greater length
in his work on “primitive” cultures, Totem and Taboo. 10 In this work, Freud defines animism as “the
doctrine of spiritual beings” (TT, pp. 87–88), and refers to magic as a practice based on the principle of
the “omnipotence of thoughts” (p. 99). “Nowadays,” Freud writes, “we have surmounted these modes
of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new 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
confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny (“U,” pp. 247–48). Once the
distinction between uncanny phenomena that stem from repressed infantile complexes and those that
stem from surmounted primitive beliefs is applied, it turns out that only a small minority of those that
Freud discusses in his essay falls into the former category. Apart from the threat to the eyes posed by
the Sandman, there are only two kinds of uncanny phenomena that Freud unambiguously attributes to
repressed infantile complexes: dismembered body parts, such as disembodied hands, which also
function as substitutes for the castration complex, and the fear of being buried alive, which activates the
repressed fantasy of “intra-uterine existence” (“U,” p. 244). The theory of surmounted primitive beliefs,
on the other hand, accounts for the bulk of the uncanny phenomena that Freud identifies. These
phenomena include ghosts, which appear to confirm “the doctrine of spiritual beings”; the double or the
doppelganger, which Freud relates to belief in the immaterial soul; inanimate objects, such as dolls,
automata, and waxworks, which appear to be alive; coincidences, which can create the impression of
fateful intervention; magical powers, such as the evil eye; and apparent psychical phenomena, such as
telepathy, precognition, and wish fulfilments, which appear to confirm belief in the “omnipotence of
thoughts.” Surmounted primitive beliefs accord to the same basic psychological structure as repressed
complexes, of something that exists in the mind, “known of old and long familiar,” but in a latent form,
and hence strange and unfamiliar, the revival of which results in the uncanny (“U,” p. 220). But there are
a number of crucial differences between repressed complexes and surmounted beliefs. To start with,
the content of a surmounted primitive belief is not 7 unconscious in the way that the latent content of a
repressed complex necessarily is. Surmounted beliefs are not transformed through unconscious
processes of the dream-work in the way that the manifest contents of repressed complexes are. The
content of a “primitive” belief, such as belief in the existence of spirits, does not change when it is
surmounted; only one’s attitude to it does. As Freud writes, to speak of “repression” in this context is to
extend the term “beyond its legitimate meaning” (“U,” p. 249).

Human beings who are able to free themselves from these kinds of animistic beliefs, do not experience
this type of the uncanny feeling, Freud adds. Silence, darkness and solitude belong to the type of the
uncanny which bothers most of the human beings as repressed infantile complexes. At the end of his
study, Freud reaches the conclusion that the uncanny experience occurs in two ways: “an the uncanny
experience occurs either when infantile complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by
some impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted seem once more to be
confirmed” (“The Uncanny”, 249). Once again, it is confirmed that Freudian understanding of the
uncanny is closely related to repression of childhood syndromes and surpassed primitive animistic
beliefs that are awakened by a random stimulant.

Freud believed that uncanny feelings happen in places where one ought to feel more secure, or when a
person is more familiar with something.

Sigmund Freud’s article «The Uncanny» gave literary critics one of the key concepts that are used in the
analysis of Gothic literature and literature of horror.

early research defined the Gothic as a period in literary history and a delimited novelistic genre, ruled by
rather strict conventions. The early literary Gothic movement comprises the period 1764 to the 1820s
and consists of a number of suspenseful texts about death and decay set in a haunted medieval past
(Birkhead 1921; Varma 1957). The genre was initially understood as part of the Romantic reaction
against an uncritical faith in Enlightenment and modernity (Railo 1927; Kiely 1973), but since then the
notion of the Gothic has evolved, and today it is generally conceived as a wider transhistorical and
transmedial generic concept tied to contemporary cultural fears and anxieties.

In examining the development of certain literary genres and works of Gothic and horror fiction in regard
to the element of fear and its main symbolic embodiment in the monster, a tight connection appears
between certain elements such as the uncanny, eerie, and monstrosity. This connection may cause the
individual to experience a type of feeling and emotion that may be described as unsettling and
horrifying, even towards a familiar thing that could cause harm and subversion. There are similarities
between the attitudes engendered by fear and those that stem from the unknown. The works of Freud,
Foucault, and Fisher are crucial to understanding the relationship between these elements. Much of the
literature on psychopathology, human behavior, and culture come from Sigmund Freud, particularly,
The Uncanny (1919), which is strongly associated with this study. The uncanny is the psychological
experience of something as strangely familiar, rather than simply mysterious. It may describe incidents
where a familiar thing or event is encountered in an unsettling, eerie, or taboo context. Freud is
considered to be the father of psychoanalytic theory. He was a neurologist and his major field of study
was the human personality. His work is unique for the reason that it aims to elaborate on the hidden
structure of the mind in addition to the human personality, behavior, and experience in different
contexts. In his literary writings, Freud announced that sensations related to the traumatic events of life
do not obviously reveal themselves. In fact, they are concealed in the unconscious. Expressing these
pent-up desires and memories is essential for human beings.
This special issue engages with two closely related and much debated concepts: the Gothic and the
uncanny. Both are notoriously difficult to define and have undergone considerable changes in the
process of conceptualization. The Gothic, originally defining a delimited period in literary history, today
encompasses a variety of meanings and cultural expressions from the mid-eighteenth century and
onwards, while the uncanny, since the publication of Sigmund Freud’s key text “Das Unheimliche”
(1919), has developed into a conceptual mixture of “psychological and aesthetic estrangement, political
and social alienation” (Masschelein 2011, 147). Accordingly, the different types of uncanny
manifestations examined here are, most often, at least as much cultural – aesthetic, political, social – as
they can be said to be psychological, pertaining to the inner mental and emotional life of an individual.

Thus, as a whole, this selection of articles investigates aspects that connect the concept of the uncanny
with the Gothic, and show how the uncanny can serve as a link between the Gothic and other related
genres and aesthetic expressions. More specifically, this special issue is part of a project on Nordic
Gothic that was an important outcome of the conference in Karlstad.2 In the following, we will
introduce the context of this project and present a survey of previous research in the field, as well as a
brief overview of the relationship between the Gothic and the uncanny.

The novel is such a genre that it affects the reader with interesting stories full of adventures of the
several protagonists. Of course we see that the Gothic reflects the times and the obsession of the
darkness, the supernatural in all of those things that people were really interested in. And also we see
the emergence of a new type of protagonist. Before that the traditional hero was popular and now we
see someone a little bit more complicated. When we think what comes to mind when we hear the word
“gothic”, probably most of us feel strange and fear. We imagine some ghosts in our minds. And probably
the ghosts that we see, attack or scare us. Sometimes or in some literary products, we picture some
creatures of macabre features or faces and forms like Frankenstein, an ill-fated monster. In some ways,
the gothic characters are in emotional emptiness, such as Frankenstein as the main character of Mary
Shelley’s novel, both in emotional emptiness and in formidable atmosphere. Sometimes the gothic may
comprise all these contrasts and many more. In this way, we can feel ourselves in an uncanny
atmosphere.

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“Supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events mean that dramatic, amazing events occur, such as
ghosts or giants walking, or inanimate objects, such as a suit of armour or painting, coming to life. In
some works, events are ultimately given a natural explanation, while in others the events are truly
supernatural” (Harris, 2015) As readers can estimate, gothic writes often use special words to a large
degree to provide the effect of fire, earthquakes, moving statues, and so forth, often blurring the line
between human-produced, natural, and supernatural events.

Dolar connects this homeless, placeless uncanny with the flourishing of Gothic fiction and argues that
Gothic figures such as ghosts and vampires are no “leftovers” from an earlier era but actually produced
by modernity itself. As he puts it, “Popular culture, always extremely sensitive to the historical shifts,
took successful hold of [the uncanny] …,” which resulted in Gothic fictions (Dolar [1991] 2004, 14).

Wijkmark discusses how Lindqvist’s novel depicts the ambiguity of the relationship between humanity
and the environment in terms of melancholy, and how telepathy – one of the forms of the uncanny to
which Freud originally drew attention – can be understood in terms of dark ecology.