Neil Bowen on
Freud and ‘The Uncanny’
KEY IDEAS
1. Repression of emotional impulses is a major source of artistic expression
2. ‘The uncanny’ is a specific aspect of the frightening
3. Connected to uncertainty, it is created, according to Jentsch, when ‘doubts whether an apparently animate being is really alive; or conversely, whether a lifeless object might not be in fact animate’
4. It is created when the uncanny object is close to real experience and most disturbing when it represents the return of something repressed. Schelling defines the uncanny as something which ought to have remained hidden but has come to light.
5. ‘The Double’ is a specific type of uncanny experience. The double occurs when characters share attributes, such as appearance or ideas, and where there is some doubt about the separate identities.
6. Originally the double was positive, akin to the soul, but becomes, in developed societies, the ‘uncanny harbinger of death’.
7. The Ego can split into the doing aspect and a self-observing aspect. This is a sort of doubling.
8. Context and genre are important factors in the creation of the uncanny. In fairy stories, for example, extraordinary events do not have an uncanny effect. The effect is much more likely if the text is realistic.
9. Point of view is also vital. The uncanny is more likely if we are in the p.o.v. of a character going through the experience, rather one observing them. Authorial presentation is also significant. Irony and comedy dissipate the uncanny.
10. Contextual factors contributing to the production of the uncanny include, silence, solitude and darkness – these relate to infantile anxieties, of which ‘the majority of humans have never quite become free’
11. The uncanny often occurs when the narrative moves from the real world into some sort of dream or otherworld.