Uncanny
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The uncanny is the
psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
experience of an event or thing that is unsettling in a way that feels oddly familiar, rather than simply mysterious. This phenomenon is used to describe incidents where a familiar entity is encountered in a frightening, eerie, or
taboo A taboo is a social group's ban, prohibition or avoidance of something (usually an utterance or behavior) based on the group's sense that it is excessively repulsive, offensive, sacred or allowed only for certain people.''Encyclopædia Britannica ...
context.D. Bate, ''Photography and Surrealism'' (2004) pp. 39–40. Ernst Jentsch set out the concept of the uncanny, later elaborated on by
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
in his 1919 essay "", which explores the eeriness of dolls and waxworks. For Freud, the uncanny is located in the strangeness of the ordinary. Expanding on the idea, psychoanalytic theorist
Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...
wrote that the uncanny places us "in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure", resulting in an irreducible
anxiety Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner wikt:turmoil, turmoil and includes feelings of dread over Anticipation, anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response ...
that gestures to
the Real In continental philosophy, the Real refers to reality in its unmediated form. In Lacanian psychoanalysis, it is an "impossible" category because of its inconceivability and opposition to expression. In depth psychology The Real is the ...
. The concept has since been taken up by a variety of thinkers and theorists like roboticist Masahiro Mori's uncanny valley and Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection.


Etymology

''Canny'' is from the Anglo-Saxon root : "knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception." The uncanny is thus "''an idea beyond one's ken''", something outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions. Freud noted the German as the antonym of , or the "homely". A more literal rendering of the psychoanalytic concept of the uncanny would therefore be "unhomeliness".


History


German idealism

Philosopher F. W. J. Schelling raised the question of the uncanny in his late ''Philosophie der Mythologie'' of 1837, postulating that the Homeric clarity was built upon a prior repression of the uncanny. In '' The Will to Power'' manuscript, German philosopher
Friedrich Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...
refers to nihilism as "the uncanniest of all guests" and, earlier, in '' On the Genealogy of Morals'' he argues it is the "will to truth" that has destroyed the
metaphysics Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of ...
that underpins the values of
Western culture Western culture, also known as Western civilization, European civilization, Occidental culture, Western society, or simply the West, refers to the Cultural heritage, internally diverse culture of the Western world. The term "Western" encompas ...
. Hence, he coins the phrase "European nihilism" to describe the condition that afflicts those Enlightenment ideals that seemingly hold strong values yet undermine themselves.


Ernst Jentsch

Uncanniness was first explored psychologically by Ernst Jentsch in a 1906 essay, ''On the Psychology of the Uncanny''. Jentsch defines the ''Uncanny'' as: being a product of "...intellectual uncertainty; so that the uncanny would always, as it were, be something one does not know one’s way about in. The better oriented in his environment a person is, the less readily will he get the impression of something uncanny in regard to the objects and events in it." He expands upon its use in fiction: Jentsch identifies German writer E. T. A. Hoffmann as a writer who uses uncanny effects in his work, focusing specifically on Hoffmann's story "The Sandman" (" Der Sandmann"), which features a lifelike doll, Olympia.


Sigmund Freud

The concept of the Uncanny was later elaborated on and developed by
Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...
in his 1919 essay "Das Unheimliche" or, "The Uncanny", which also draws on the work of Hoffmann (whom Freud considers the "unrivaled master of the uncanny in literature"). However, he criticizes Jentsch's belief that Olympia is the central uncanny element in the story (" The Sandman"): Instead, Freud draws on a wholly different element of the story, namely, "the idea of being robbed of one's eyes", to be the "more striking instance of uncanniness" in the tale. He focuses on how the anxiety of their loss, is not unlike male castration anxiety. He continues, explaining how this anxiety may lead a male audience, robbed of their masculinity, feeling the uncanny. Their
masculinity Masculinity (also called manhood or manliness) is a set of attributes, behaviors, and roles generally associated with men and boys. Masculinity can be theoretically understood as Social construction of gender, socially constructed, and there i ...
being robbed, provides Freud the foundation to illustrate a central contributor to male fear. Freud goes on, for the remainder of the essay, to identify uncanny effects that result from instances of "repetition of the same thing," linking the concept to that of the repetition compulsion. He includes incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one's steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully (here Freud may be said to be prefiguring the concept that Jung would later refer to as synchronicity). He also discusses the uncanny nature of
Otto Rank Otto Rank (; ; né Rosenfeld; 22 April 1884 – 31 October 1939) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, writer, and philosopher. Born in Vienna, he was one of Sigmund Freud's closest colleagues for 20 years, a prolific writer on psychoanalytic themes, ...
's concept of the "double". Freud specifically relates an aspect of the ''Uncanny'' derived from German etymology. By contrasting the German adjective ''unheimlich'' with its base word ''heimlich'' ("concealed, hidden, in secret"), he proposes that social taboo often yields an aura not only of pious reverence but even more so of horror and even disgust, as the taboo state of an item gives rise to the commonplace assumption that that which is hidden from ''public eye'' (cf. the ''eye'' or ''sight'' metaphor) must be a dangerous threat and even an abomination – especially if the concealed item is obviously or presumingly sexual in nature. Basically, the ''Uncanny'' is what unconsciously reminds us of our own '' Id'', our forbidden and thus repressed impulses – especially when placed in a context of uncertainty that can remind one of infantile beliefs in the omnipotence of thought. Such uncanny elements are perceived as being threatening by our '' super-ego'' ridden with oedipal guilt because it fears symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from societal norms. Thus, the items and individuals that we
project A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be ...
our own repressed impulses upon become a most ''uncanny'' threat to us, ''uncanny'' monsters and freaks akin to fairy-tale folk-devils, and subsequently often become scapegoats we blame for all sorts of perceived miseries, calamities, and maladies. After Freud,
Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, ; ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Sigmund Freud, Freud", Lacan gave The Seminars of Jacques Lacan, year ...
, in his 1962–1963 seminar "L'angoisse" ("Anxiety"), used the Unheimlich "via regia" to enter into the territory of Angst. Lacan showed how the same image that seduces the subject, trapping him in the narcissistic impasse, may suddenly, by a contingency, show that it is dependent on something, some hidden object, and so the subject may grasp at the same time that he is not autonomous (5 December 1962).


Related theories

This concept is closely related to Julia Kristeva's concept of abjection, where one reacts adversely to something forcefully cast out of the symbolic order. Abjection can be uncanny in that the observer can recognize something within the abject, possibly of what it was before it was 'cast out', yet be repulsed by what it is that caused it to be cast out to begin with. Kristeva lays special emphasis on the uncanny return of the past abject with relation to the 'uncanny stranger'. Sadeq Rahimi has noted a common relationship between the uncanny and direct or metaphorical visual references, which he explains in terms of basic processes of ego development, specifically as developed by Lacan's theory of the mirror stage. Rahimi presents a wide range of evidence from various contexts to demonstrate how uncanny experiences are typically associated with themes and metaphors of vision, blindness, mirrors and other optical tropes. He also presents historical evidence showing strong presence of ocular and specular themes and associations in the literary and psychological tradition out of which the notion of 'the uncanny' emerged. According to Rahimi, instances of the uncanny like doppelgängers,
ghost In folklore, a ghost is the soul or Spirit (supernatural entity), spirit of a dead Human, person or non-human animal that is believed by some people to be able to appear to the living. In ghostlore, descriptions of ghosts vary widely, from a ...
s, '' déjà vu'',
alter ego An alter ego (Latin for "other I") means an alternate Self (psychology), self, which is believed to be distinct from a person's normal or true original Personality psychology, personality. Finding one's alter ego will require finding one's other ...
s, self-alienations and split personhoods, phantoms,
twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two ...
s, living dolls, etc. share two important features: that they are closely tied with visual tropes, and that they are variations on the theme of doubling of the ego. Roboticist Masahiro Mori's essay on human reactions to humanlike entities, ''Bukimi no Tani Genshō'' (Valley of Eeriness Phenomenon), describes the gap between familiar living people and their also familiar inanimate representations, such as dolls, puppets, mannequins, prosthetic hands, and android robots. The entities in the valley are between these two poles of common phenomena. Mori has stated that he made the observation independently of Jentsch and Freud, though a link was forged by Reichardt and translators who rendered ''bukimi'' as ''uncanny''.Reichardt, J. (1978). Human reactions to imitation humans, or Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley. In ''Robots: Fact, Fiction, and Prediction.'' New York: Penguin.


See also


References


Citations


Sources

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External links


Freud, 'The Uncanny'
{{Authority control Concepts in aesthetics Psychoanalytic terminology Fear Freudian psychology