The Uncanny
Sigmund Freud

Before you read Freud’s text:

·         If you are uncomfortable with or confused by Freud’s use of the term “castration complex,” you might replace it with the notion of anxiety about “the impossibility of achieving total satisfaction” of one’s desires.  To this extent we are all “castrated” for Freud:  we cannot totally satisfy our desires.  Life in society must thus teach us to overcome our desire to believe that we can totally satisfy our desires (http://nosubject.com/Castration).

·         Note that Hoffmann in The Sandman uses the word “uncanny” four times:  1) to describe the strange effect of Nathanial on the reader, one that the author has difficulty expressing;  2) Nathaniel’s horror when he sees Coppola’s spectacles which seem like many eyes; 3) when Nathaniel’s friends describe Olympia at the dance; 4) Nathaniel’s response that only the poetic can understand her uncanny nature.  Let’s see which examples most interest Freud

1a. How does Freud define the “uncanny”?

1.b. Part I, chapter I What are the two very different definitions of “heimlich” in German?  What are the two major groups of definitions of the word “unheimlich” (“uncanny”) in German.

c.  Part I, chapter II   What uncertainty is uncanny for Jentsch?  What is the main uncanny theme of The Sandman for Freud?  Why?  What does the author intend for his reader to do, according to Freud?  If intellectual uncertainty does not suffice to cause the feeling of the uncanny, what else contributes according to Freud? Recount the story.

If the loss of the eyes suggests castration (the impossibility of totally satisfying one’s desires) how, in your opinion, can our eyes make us believe that we can totally satisfy our desires, as when we look at a beautiful person ?  If we are to overcome our illusion of totally satisfying our desires, how must we interpret our vision of that person?  According to Freud how does Coppelius prevent Nathaniel from satisfying his love (desire)?   Why is the source of the uncanny not an infantile fear of dolls coming alive?

2.  a. Part II “Hoffman is the…come true” What does Freud mean by the “double”?  What was the double originally according to Rank?  What two things does it become when the narcissistic stage is overcome?  What notion of the double relates to the uncanny? [In many stories, a character fears being replaced by an evil double who steals and takes over his life over which he no longer has control] How can repetition cause a feeling of the uncanny?  Why? How does Nathanial have a “compulsion to repeat”?   What other repetitions in The Sandman are uncanny?  How does this relate to Nathanial’s belief that his life is destined ?

b.   “One of the most uncanny…token of repression” What hidden and undesirable wish is made public by the fear of the “evil eye” (which still exists in Greece!)?  How does the uncanny relate to the repression of unwanted desires?   For Freud, what are the intellectual and emotional relationships of the “supposedly educated person” to the notion that the dead can come alive?

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3.a. Part III  What is Freud’s definition of the uncanny now?  Why is it insufficient?  Why are situations often less uncanny in literature than they would be in real life?  How can an author create the sense of the uncanny? Which examples of the uncanny have the same effect in fiction and real life?  Why is Heroditus’s story of a severed hand not uncanny?  By extension, what do we need for the uncanny?  In your opinion, what makes Nathanial’s repetition compulsion uncanny:   the fact that he repeats the same words and actions? the fact that he does not want to admit that he has this compulsion, but sees projections of it in Clara and especially Olympia? the fact that he cannot admit that he cannot totally satisfy his desires, but sees images of that impossibility in Coppelius and Coppola?  the fact that his self-destructive wishes are out of control? 

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