The emergence of the uncanny in art is generally located in the lateeighteenth or early-nineteenth

century, in Gothic novels and Romantic short stories by writers such as E. T. A. Hoffmann and Edgar Allan
Poe. In narrative works, the uncanny is often associated with themes of madness and delusion, and an
ambiguous suggestion of the supernatural.

In Freud’s analysis, then, the uncanny is always something to do with “animism, magic and sorcery, the
omnipotence of thoughts, man’s attitude to death, involuntary repetition and the castration
complex”.53 This list comprises “practically all the factors which turn something frightening into
something uncanny”. And yet, immediately following this assertion, Freud remarks that “we can also
speak of a living person as uncanny”.55 This “also” extends itself throughout the essay such that, in the
final reckoning, epilepsy, madness, dead bodies, fragmented bodies, live burial, silence, solitude and
darkness can also produce the uncanny, as can any effacement of the distinction between imagination
and reality.

Although distinct, these two reflections on the uncanny are admittedly inspired by a tale of Gothic
fiction of the early nineteenth century written by E.T.A. Hoffmann and entitled “The Sandman” (1817).
Whereas Jentsch sees the doll or womanlike automaton of the story (Olympia) as the most striking
source of the uncanny due to the uncertainty or un-decidability of the inanimate/animate opposition
(i.e., due to the doubt as to whether lifeless objects may or not be animate), Freud claims that the basis
of the uncanny is the character of the sandman himself—a terrifying mythic figure who tears out
children’s eyes, an enforcer of castration, and thereby an eerie double of the protagonist’s father.

Terry Castle states that “it is not simply that Freud fixes on E.T.A Hofmann (1776-1822) — who began his
literary career in the last decade of the eighteenth century and drew heavily on the rich traditions of the
late eighteenth-century Gothic and fantastic fiction” and adds that he was the “archetypal exponent of
what might be called uncanny consciousness” (Castle, 1995, p.10). Regarding the late eighteenth-
century fiction, Freud thinks that “Hoffmann is the first and “unrivalled master” of the uncanny—the
writer who has succeeded in producing uncanny effects better than anyone else” (1995, p.10). Freud
thinks that Hoffmann draws attention to the features of the late eighteenth century, so he preferred The
Sandman to analyze this term. In other words, Hoffman both reflects on the traditions of his century as
well as presenting the technological improvements.

In this essay, Freud proposes a psychoanalytical reading of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s short story Sandman in
which Nathanael, the protagonist, is shocked and frightened by a number of disturbing circumstances.
The first of these events is when Nathanael meets Coppola, a man who looks impressively like a
menacing man named Coppelius, whom he had met as a child and whose image bodied forth the mythic
figure of the Sandman in his childhood nightmares. The second disturbing situation arises when
Nathanael realizes that the woman he is in love with, Olimpia, is in fact a doll, which is revealed in a
shocking scene in which the protagonist sees Olimpia without her eyes, for her eyeballs are being
replaced. The image of a loved one missing the eyeballs with no sight of blood, but simply empty orbits
instead, added to Nathanael’s childhood fear of the Sandman, a collector of eyes, aptly exemplify
Freud’s concept of the uncanny. His contention is that, upon reading Hoffmann’s story, the reader, along
with the protagonist, experiences something that was hidden from sight, concealed, which is then
unexpectedly revealed, thus causing a “shock”, precisely one of the definitions for the term Heimliche:
‘Concealed, kept from sight, so that others do not get to know of or about it, withheld from others
(FREUD, 2003, p.22)’. However, the term also means ‘belonging to the house or the family […], intimate,
friendly comfortable; the enjoyment of quiet content, etc.’ (2003, p.22). So, being Unheimliche the
opposite of Heimliche, it is the opposite of comfortable, thus pointing to that which is disturbing yet
somehow familiar, such as a known face or thing out of its usual place.

A good way to introduce Freud’s theory of the return of the repressed is using the case study by which
Freud first introduces the theory in his essay, Hoffmann’s story of “The Sandman.” Freud’s reading of
“The Sandman” has become well known, and even achieved a degree of notoriety, in literature studies,
which makes it a useful example for me here, because many writers have already drawn attention to its
inadequacies.“The Sandman” tells the tragic tale of a student, Nathanael, who experiences a strange
series of traumatic events, which date back to his childhood—including a mysterious explosion which
kills his father, and falling in love with a mechanical doll, Olympia, having mistaken “her” to be human—
and who, prompted by these events, suffers recurrent bouts of madness.4 These strange events center
on the disturbing figure of the eponymous Sandman, a fabled 3 monster who, it is told, steals away the
eyes of naughty children at night, throwing sand in their eyes so that they “jump out of their head all
bloody” (Hoffmann, p. 185). Nathanael associates the Sandman with two ominous characters who enter
his life at different times—a fearsome lawyer and friend of Nathanael’s father, named Coppelius, whom
he encounters as a child, and a sinister-looking peddler of optical devices, going by the name of Coppola,
whom he encounters as a student. There is a suggestion in the story, which Freud draws our attention
to, that Coppola and Coppelius are one and the same person, and, moreover, that both are somehow
manifestations of the fabled Sandman; but it is unclear whether this may just be a product of
Nathanael’s disturbed imagination. Freud asserts that the “unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness
evoked by the story” attaches primarily to the figure of the Sandman (“U,” p. 227); but he denies that
the effect is caused by uncertainty pertaining to the strange events, or the identities of Coppelius and
Coppola. Hoffmann does, Freud acknowledges, create a “kind of uncertainty in us in the beginning” to
this effect, but claims that this uncertainty dissipates as the story progresses, as Hoffmann supposedly
makes it “quite clear” that Coppelius, Coppola, and the Sandman are in fact identical (“U,” p. 230).

Instead, Freud locates the story’s uncanny effect in the threat posed to Nathanael’s eyes, which is a
theme that recurs throughout the narrative. As a child, Nathanael spies on his father and Coppelius
engaged in some mysterious alchemical operation, and is discovered by Coppelius, who, enraged,
threatens to take Nathanael’s eyes: “‘Now we’ve got eyes—eyes—a beautiful pair of children’s eyes’”
(Hoffmann, p. 188). Years later, when studying abroad, Coppola unexpectedly knocks on Nathanael’s
door at his lodgings and offers to sell him, among his other wares, glass eyes: “‘I got eyes-a too, fine
eyes-a’” (p. 202). It later transpires, in a terrifying moment of revelation, that these are the same “eyes”
that were used in the construction of Nathanael’s beloved, the ingenious “living” doll, Olympia.
According to Freud’s analysis, eyes function in the story as a substitute for Nathanael’s (and,
presumably, the reader’s) repressed Oedipal fear of castration. Coppelius, Coppola, and the Sandman all
represent the “bad” side of Nathanael’s ambivalent attitude towards his father, that is, the father figure
who threatens to castrate him. Such, Freud claims, is the primary source of the story’s uncanny effect.
Many of the writers who have discussed Freud’s reading of “The Sandman” have highlighted how, on
the one hand, his Oedipal interpretation seems implausible, and how, on the other hand, Freud is too
quick to dismiss uncertainty on the reader’s part about the strange, disturbing events—about whether
Coppola really is Coppelius in disguise, and whether both really are in any way connected to the fabled
Sandman—as the cause of its uncanny effect. But before I pursue these lines of enquiry, let me
elaborate the terms of Freud’s return of the repressed at a more general level, and show why I think it
falls short as a theory of the uncanny. According to the theory, the uncanny is the feeling of anxiety that
arises when something repressed in the mind is revived by some impression. To understand the theory,
then, we need to understand three things: we need to understand the nature of the thing that is
repressed, the nature of repression according to the psychoanalytic model, and the manner in which
what is repressed is revived such that it elicits the feeling of the uncanny.

In order to clarify the subject and to give examples of the uncanny situations, Freud refers to E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s story “The Sandman”. He marks that he does not follow Jentsch’s idea that “In telling a
story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating the uncanny effects is to leave the reader in
uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an automaton” (“The Uncanny”,
227). Freud argues that the uncanny atmosphere evoked by the story, does not have any connection
with the theme of the doll Olympia. It is, however, closely related to the theme of the ‘Sand-man” who
tears out children’s eyes (“The Uncanny”, 227). Freud reminds us that “A study of dreams, phantasies
and myths has taught us that anxiety about one’s eyes, the fear of going blind, is often enough a
substitute for the dread of being castrated” (“The Uncanny”, 231). He sets forth that the protagonist of
the story, Nathaniel’s fear of losing his eyes, is strongly associated with the fear of castration. He also
adds that “elements in the story like these, and many others, seem arbitrary and meaningless so long as
we deny all connection between fears about the eye and castration; but they become intelligible as soon
as we replace the Sand-man by the dreaded father at whose hands castration is expected” (“The
Uncanny”, 232). Freud associates Nathaniel’s father with the Sand-man who tears out children’s eyes,
and therefore he concludes that the uncanny effect of the story stems from “the anxiety belonging to
the castration complex of childhood” (“The Uncanny”, 233)

In the story, several examples of “the double or doppelgänger” convention, which is one of the
representations of the uncanny in literature, can be seen. Fredrik Svenaeus suggests in his article
“Freud’s Philosophy of the Uncanny” that “The uncanniness of Coppelius seems to come precisely from
the uncertainty regarding his identity. He seems to assume the identity of three different characters at
the same time in the story: the sandman, Coppelius the lawyer, and Coppola the optician” (243).
Nathaniel’s father and the lawyer Coppelius are also considered to be doubles of each other. While the
father is associated with the good, Coppelius is associated with the evil. The double in literature
connotes two identical figures, each of them represents completely opposite character traits. The
double convention is associated with the duality in human nature.
The visuality is important to create the uncanny effect in literature. The uncanny occurs especially when
an individual or a character in a literary work comes to encounter his/her own “self” in the form of a
double or any kind of visual image, may it be an apparition, reflection or a portrait. In literature, it is
possible to find a myriad of examples of the uncanny and its motifs, especially in late-Victorian fiction.
Since the uncanny has to do with death, doubles, estrangement towards the self, repression of certain
experiences and/or feelings, it offers a great deal of material for literary works. The uncanny experience
comes into existence through certain motifs; one of the most common motifs of the uncanny in
literature is that of the double, also often called doppelgänger. Rosemary Jackson explains that the
German word doppelgänger means “double-goer” or “walker”, and it was first used by Hoffman with the
meaning of double or dual (108). The double in a literary work usually bears a strong, sometimes even
identical, resemblance to a character; sometimes the double can be observed to parallel the character’s
personal traits, situation and so on. The double is usually portrayed to be the result of a fragmentation
of the self-due to the repression caused by the pressing dictates of the society or the psychological
effect of a traumatic experience. As Freud suggests, the double as a literary motif has to do with
“mirrors, with shadows, guardian spirits, with the belief in the soul and the fear of death” (“The
Uncanny”, 235). Freud considers the double as the “insurance against destruction of the ego” (“The
Uncanny”, 235). What he means by this is that the individual ends up fragmenting his/her self and
creates two separate selves, one of which allows him/her to appear the way the society expects them to
appear, while the other is shaped by their repressed traits and inner desires. Mostly, the individual tries
to keep the latter hidden, away from sight, thus sweeping the unaccepted into the unconscious.
Rosemary Jackson asserts that “The double signifies a desire to be reunited with a lost centre of
personality” (108). As a kind of defence mechanism, creating a double identity helps the individual to
reconcile his inner desires with the societal expectations and go on with their life. As Freud suggests, the
double results from the return of the infantile material which is repressed and the primary source of
creating a double is the narcissism of the child by means of which projections of multiple selves are
created. When these created selves are encountered later, the uncanny 13 experience of returning to a
primitive state is felt. With regard to this, Freud points out that “when the primary narcissism stage has
been surmounted, ‘the double’ reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it
becomes the uncanny harbinger of death” (“The Uncanny”, 235). What he means by “harbinger of
death” can be interpreted as the annihilation of the self. When the created self, the double, becomes
dominant on the self and starts to control its actions, it results in the destruction of the real identity.

The tradition of double in literature can be divided into several categories such as evil twin, shadow,
ghosts and apparitions, two different persons bearing the same name, a person’s past or future self.
When examined, it can be seen that the doppelgänger as a literary device serves a range of different
purposes in literature. Firstly, it can be used to portray the “other” self of a character which may help
the reader to explore the character’s darker/brighter side. Hence, the portrayal of a character can be
reinforced in complexity, depth and dimension. Secondly, the doppelgänger can play a significant role in
terms of plot structure, either raising a climactic point or leading to the resolution of a conflict. The
doppelgänger adds subdimensions and helps the story develop in a multi-layered form. Freud also thinks
that man’s attitude towards death and dead bodies create an uncanny effect. He suggests that
“insufficient scientific knowledge about death” and “old belief that the dead man becomes the enemy of
his survivor and seeks to carry him off to share his new life with him” drags people into a feeling of the
uncanny (“The Uncanny”, 242). He also adds that “the primitive fear of the dead is still so strong within
us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation (“The Uncanny”, 242). Even if the
educated people do not believe that the dead may appear to them as ghosts or spirits, they breed a
feeling of the uncanny due to their repressed fear of death. Weird coincidences and involuntary
repetitions are also considered as the uncanny experiences. Freud exemplifies this type of the uncanny
as follows: “if we come across the number 62 several times in a single day, or if we begin to notice that
everything which has a number-addresses, hotel rooms, compartments in railway 14 trains-invariably
has the same one, or at all events one which contains the same figures. We do feel this to be the
uncanny” (“The Uncanny”, 238). In the same manner, thinking about someone whom you have not
heard of for a long time and coming across with him on the same day is another example of the uncanny
feeling of coincidences. Freud relates this kind of the uncanny experience with the infantile psychology
and “compulsion to repeat,” which is directly connected with the unconscious and childhood traumas.
The thing that is repeated is considered to be the result of the process of repression.

Apart from these, there are other features such as omnipotence of thoughts, dread of the evil eye,
animism, and fulfilment of unrealistic wishes and silence, darkness and solitude which create the
uncanny effect in literary works and real life as well. Related to this kind of the uncanny, Freud’s
explanation is that;

we---or our primitive forefathers---once believed that these possibilities were realities, and were
convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays we no longer believe in them, 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 seem to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a feeling of the uncanny. (“The Uncanny”, 248)

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. As a psychologist, it is still a matter of curiosity why
Freud chose a subject from the aesthetics as the discussion of his study. Derrida mentions in his Writing
and Difference that “Freud loved the arts and (literature, poetry, music) and this essay is an example of
how he uses them to affirm and describe his ideas. The most obvious example of this process in his
writing is the Oedipus complex” (qtd. in Noam Israeli, 383). It is apparent that Freud enjoyed arts and
borrowed from its notions while naming his psychological concepts. Besides his interest towards art,
Freud may intentionally choose his subjects from aesthetics as both literature and psychoanalysis search
for the hidden and implicit meanings. Portier points out why Freud made a detailed study on the
uncanny and why it was of great importance to him as follows:

Freud’s understanding of modern human psychology and the psychoanalytic process relies on the
uncanny. The “talking cure” is intended to call to light that which is simultaneously hidden but central to
the patient’s hysteria or other psychological condition. The patient must experience the uncanny to
break through and set foot on the path towards a cure. This is one explanation for why Freud took up
the uncanny as the subject of an essay despite his claim that he does not normally deal with problems of
aesthetics.

The most well-known part of Freud’s reading of the uncanny deals with Hoffmann’s short story “The
Sandman” (1816a) (originally, “Der Sandmann” [1816b]), which we will look at in detail in section II.
Freud’s interest in this story was no doubt prompted by Jentsch’s passing reference to Hoffmann’s
writings in “On the Psychology of the Uncanny” (1906a), an essay Freud cites and that itself must have
spurred his initial attention to the psychological aspects of the broader topic. Of course, Freud famously
dismisses Jentsch’s interpretation, suggesting that Jentsch’s primary locating of the uncanny in
“intellectual uncertainty” misstates its true cause, at least in terms of its application to Hoffmann’s
story:

entsch writes: “In telling a story, one of the most successful devices for easily creating uncanny effects is
to leave the reader in uncertainty whether a particular figure in the story is a human being or an
automaton, and to do it in such a way that his attention is not focused directly upon his uncertainty, so
that he may not be led to go into the matter and clear it up immediately [Jentsch 1906a, p. 13].” This
observation . . . refers primarily to the story of “The Sand-Man” in Hoffmann’s Nachstücken, which
contains the origins of Olimpia, the doll . . . . But I cannot think—and I hope most readers of the story
will agree with me—that the theme of the doll Olimpia, who is to all appearances a living being, is by any
means the only, or indeed the most important, element that must be held responsible for the quite
unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness evoked by the story . . . . There is no question . . . of any
intellectual uncertainty [in Hoffmann’s story] . . . . The theory of intellectual uncertainty is thus incapable
of explaining that impression. [Freud 1919a, pp. 227, 230-231]3

Freud is playing a bit loose here in that Jentsch’s brief mention of Hoffmann (he never even explicitly
references “The Sandman”), and even his broader interest in the confusion as to whether a figure is “a
human being or an automaton,” are only parts of his theory of intellectual uncertainty as that idea
shapes his understanding of the uncanny. And Freud will later complicate matters even more in asking—
though without recalling Jentsch—whether “we are after all justified in entirely ignoring intellectual
uncertainty as a factor” in the evocation of uncanny feelings (1919a, p. 247).4 But at the point in the
argument where he is explicitly addressing Jentsch’s essay, Freud makes an extended reference to
Hoffmann’s story in which he substitutes for Jentsch’s intellectual uncertainty Hoffmann’s “theme of the
‘Sand-Man’ who tears out children’s eyes” (p. 227). At least in the context of “The Sandman,” it is this
“theme” (in the figure of the Sandman) to which, according to Freud, “the feeling of something uncanny
is directly attached” (p. 230; daß das Gefühl des Unheimlichen direkt an der Gestalt des Sandmannes . . .
haftet [1919b, p. 242]). “Directly attached” is somewhat misleading in that “the idea of being robbed of
one’s eyes” is itself a replacement based on the “substitutive relation between the eye and the male
organ”; hence, what is really at stake in the uncanny, at least as Freud reads Hoffmann’s story, is not the
fear caused by intellectual uncertainty about a figure’s status as animated or lifeless, but rather “the
dread of being castrated” (p. 231), which, in its deferred form—the return of the repressed—becomes
the chief instance and a synecdochic emblem of Freud’s new interpretation.
In the following two chapters, I indicate the ways in which the texts’ respective protagonists experience
the doubling of their identities and I call attention to the societal, inter- and intra-personal
circumstances that lead them to these uncanny encounters. In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is
confronted with a double of himself which appears and takes on life in his portrait. Conversely, My
Brilliant Friend presents the lifelong uncanny encounter between two characters whose identities are so
interconnected that they become foils, doubles, opposites and “alter egos” of each other. In the
conclusion, upon careful analysis of these literary characters, I resolve to expound the reader’s role in
interpreting the affect produced by the uncanny in these two novels.

Freud turns to E.T.A Hoffmann’s 1816 short story “The Sandman” – claiming that Hoffmann was “the
unrivalled master of the uncanny in literature” (“Uncanny” 141) – to reach a closer understanding of the
concept. According to Jentsch, the most uncanny effect in general is an apparent “lifeless thing” coming
to life (13). He calls to mind automata, figures of wax, and lifelike dolls. In the case of “The Sandman”,
this is expressed by the automaton Olimpia, who is so lifelike that the protagonist does not realize she is
inhuman for a long time.4 However, what constitutes the most uncanny effect in Hoffmann’s story,
reasons Freud, is the figure of the Sandman, who is associated with “the idea of being robbed of one’s
eyes” (138), which in turn is directly related to the castration complex5 , both in fiction and in dreams. In
“The Sandman” this fear is constantly connected with the death of Nathaniel’s father and the Sandman
“always appears as a disrupter of love” (“Uncanny” 140), as the figure of the Sandman – who is
Nathaniel’s father’s double – prevents Nathaniel from forming meaningful relationships with Clara or
even Olimpia.

In his seminal 1919 article entitled "Das Unheimliche, " Sigmund Freud, through an innovative analysis of
E.T.A. Hoffman's 1815 classic horror story "The Sandman," laid the basis for the concept of the uncanny
in psychoanalytic theory, as well as its repercussions in clinical practice and in the field of the aesthetics.