Sigmund Freud's View Of The Uncanny

In Sigmund Freud’s “The Uncanny” the main idea in the essay is his idea of what the uncanny really is. Freud’s theory is that the uncanny is something unfamiliar that belongs to all that is terrible, explaining that the uncanny is the fear of the unfamiliar. On the other hand, Freud discusses how the familiar can become uncanny in our eyes. In his essay he conducts a thorough examination of what meaning has come to be attached to the word uncanny and examining the people, things, sensations, experiences, and situations that awake in us the feeling of uncanniness. The Uncanny is a feeling of fear and horror and its most significant elements and characteristics are Intellectual uncertainty, The double or fear of death, and superstition of the evil eye. The first most significant element and characteristic of the uncanny is intellectual uncertainty. Freud mentioned other people’s work in his essay such as Jentsch’s theory about the uncanny being caused because of intellectual uncertainty. Intellectual …show more content…
This characteristic and element is significant to the uncanny because it consists of things many people fear. According to Freud, “Many people experience the feeling [of the “uncanny”] in the highest degree in relation to death and dead bodies, to the return of the dead, and to spirits and ghosts” (Freud 13). In other words, it is common for people to have a fear of death, dead bodies, the return of the dead, spirits and ghosts. Many people fear death and do not want to die, but biology has not been able to come to a conclusion as to whether death is the inevitable fate of every living being or whether it can be an avoidable event in life. Not knowing what happens after death can arouse an uncanny feeling within oneself. In knowing that the dead can become visible as spirits, we feel an uncanniness because we do not want them to appear to