Heimlich places in the hu- among its different shades of meaning the word heimlich man body, pudenda. What is heimlich thus comes to be unheimlich. Heimlich, as used of knowledge, mystic, allegorical: a heimlich meaning, mysticus, divinus, occultus, figuratus. Heimlich in a different sense, as withdrawn from and kept out of sight. The word unheimlich is only used knowledge, unconscious:.
Heimlich also has the meaning of customarily, we are told, as the contrary of the first signi- that which is obscure, inaccessible to knowledge. Sanders tells us nothing not see?
They do not trust me; they fear the heimlich face of the concerning a possible genetic connection between these Duke of Friedland. On the other hand, we notice that 9. Unheimlich is in some way or other a sub-species of heimlich. Let us retain this discovery, Heimlich; adj. But I cannot think—and I hope that most read- ers of the story will agree with me—that the theme of the In proceeding to review those things, persons, impres- doll, Olympia, who is to all appearances a living being, is sions, events and situations which are able to arouse in us a by any means the only element to be held responsible for feeling of the uncanny in a very forcible and definite form, the quite unparalleled atmosphere of uncanniness which the first requirement is obviously to select a suitable ex- the story evokes; or, indeed, that it is the most important ample to start upon.
Jentsch has taken as a very good in- among them. The main the impression made by wax-work figures, artificial dolls theme of the story is, on the contrary, something different, and automatons.
On certain evenings his mother used to send the else in producing uncanny effects. Hoffmann has repeatedly employed this psy- of their heads all bleeding. Then he puts the eyes in a sack chological artifice with success in his fantastic narratives. He determined to find out what the Sand-Man telescope from Coppola. He soon falls in love with her so vio- person of whom the children were frightened when he oc- lently that he quite forgets his clever and sensible be- casionally came to a meal; and he now identified this Cop- trothed on her account.
But Olympia was an automaton pelius with the dreaded Sand-Man. Concerning the rest of whose works Spalanzani had made, and whose eyes Cop- the scene, Hoffmann already leaves us in doubt whether pola, the Sand-Man, had put in. The student surprises the we are witnessing the first delirium of the panic-stricken two men quarrelling over their handiwork.
The optician boy, or a succession of events which are to be regarded in carries off the wooden eyeless doll; and the mechanician, the story as being real. Na- eyes! His father begs him off and saves his eyes. After faster—rings of fire—rings of fire! Whirl about, rings of this the boy falls into a deep swoon; and a long illness fol- fire—round and round!
Wooden doll, ho! The grains of sand that are to be seemed at last to have recovered. One day he out of the flames; and in both cases they are meant to make was walking through the town and marketplace, where the his eyes jump out. In the course of another visit of the high tower of the Town-Hall threw its huge shadow. The lawyer Coppelius vanished from the brother, who was walking with them, down below.
Up place without leaving a trace behind. This man had offered a new fit of madness. Her brother, brought to her side by her cries, rescues rometers—also got fine eyes, beautiful eyes. For the conclusion of the story of the lawyer Coppelius, suddenly returned.
We may sup- makes it quite clear that Coppola the optician really is the pose it was his approach, seen through the telescope, that lawyer Coppelius and thus also the Sand-Man.
No sooner does he lie on not lessen the impression of uncanniness in the least de- the paving-stones with a shattered skull than the Sand-Man gree. Uncertainty dreaded by them as an injury to the eye. We are accus- whether an object is living or inanimate, which we must tomed to say, too, that we will treasure a thing as the apple admit in regard to the doll Olympia, is quite irrelevant in of our eye.
A study of dreams, phantasies and myths has connection with this other, more striking instance of un- taught us that a morbid anxiety connected with the eyes canniness.
It is true that the writer creates a kind of uncer- and with going blind is often enough a substitute for the tainty in us in the beginning by not letting us know, no dread of castration. In blinding himself, Oedipus, that doubt purposely, whether he is taking us into the real mythical law-breaker, was simply carrying out a mitigated world or into a purely fantastic one of his own creation.
He form of the punishment of castration—the only punish- has admitted the right to do either; and if he chooses to ment that according to the lex talionis was fitted for him. We find in the story psychoanalytic view to select precisely the story of the of the Sand-Man the other theme upon which Jentsch lays Sand-Man upon which to build his case that morbid anxi- stress, of a doll that appears to be alive.
Jentsch believes ety about the eyes has nothing to do with the castration- that a particularly favourable condition for awakening un- complex. This singular feature, has won back his Clara and is about to be happily united to which seems quite out of perspective in the picture of the Sand-Man, in- her.
Things like these and many more seem arbitrary and troduces a new castration-equivalent; but it also emphasizes the identity meaningless in the story so long as we deny all connection of Coppelius and his later counterpart, Spalanzani the mechanician, and between fears about the eye and castration; but they be- helps us to understand who Olympia is. The father of both, Spalanzani and Cop- the dreaded father at whose hands castration is awaited.
Olympia is, as it were, a dissociated complex of Na- original arrangement. We may with justice call such love narcissistic, and can understand whereas the one threatens to blind him, that is, to castrate him, the why he who has fallen victim to it should relinquish his real, external other, the loving father, intercedes for his sight.
That part of the com- object of love. The psychological truth of the situation in which the plex which is most strongly repressed, the death-wish against the father, young man, fixated upon his father by his castration-complex, is inca- finds expression in the death of the good father, and Coppelius is made pable of loving a woman, is amply proved by numerous analyses of pa- answerable for it.
Later, in his student days, Professor Spalanzani and tients whose story, though less fantastic, is hardly less tragic than that of Coppola the optician reproduce this double representation of the father- the student Nathaniel.
When he was three identified with the lawyer Coppelius. Just as before they used to work years old, his father left his small family, never to be united to them together over the fire, so now they have jointly created the doll Olym- again. According to Grisebach, in his biographical introduction to pia; the Professor is even called the father of Olympia.
We remember that in their early games chil- transferring mental processes from the one person to the dren do not distinguish at all sharply between living and other—what we should call telepathy—so that the one lifeless objects, and that they are especially fond of treat- possesses knowledge, feeling and experience in common ing their dolls like live people.
In fact I have occasionally with the other, identifies himself with another person, so heard a woman patient declare that even at the age of eight that his self becomes confounded, or the foreign self is she had still been convinced that her dolls would be certain substituted for his own—in other words, by doubling, di- to come to life if she were to look at them in a particular viding and interchanging the self. And finally there is the way, with as concentrated a gaze as possible.
The source treated by Otto Rank. There seems to be a contra- death; but he also lets in a flood of light on the astonishing diction here; but perhaps it is only a complication, which evolution of this idea. This Elixir] contains a mass of themes to which one is tempted invention of doubling as a preservation against extinction to ascribe the uncanny effect of the narrative; but it is too has its counterpart in the language of dreams, which is obscure and intricate a story to venture to summarize.
We must content ourselves with select- behind the double takes on a different aspect. From having ing those themes of uncanniness which are most promi- been an assurance of immortality, he becomes the ghastly nent, and seeing whether we can fairly trace then also back harbinger of death. They are a harking-back to par- criticizing faculty, which may be incorporated in the idea ticular phases in the evolution of the self-regarding feeling, of a double.
There are also all those unfulfilled but possi- a regression to a time when the ego was not yet sharply ble futures to which we still like to cling in phantasy, all differentiated from the external world and from other per- those strivings of the ego which adverse external circum- sons.
I believe that these factors are partly responsible for stances have crushed, and all our suppressed acts of voli- the impression of the uncanny, although it is not easy to tion which nourish in us the illusion of Free Will. That factor which consists in a recurrence of the same situations, things and events, will perhaps not appeal to 10 I cannot help thinking that when poets complain that two souls dwell everyone as a source of uncanny feeling. From what I have within the human breast, and when popular psychologists talk of the observed, this phenomenon does undoubtedly, subject to splitting of the ego in an individual, they have some notion of this divi- certain conditions and combined with certain circum- sion which relates to the sphere of ego-psychology between the criti- cal faculty and the rest of the ego, and not of the antithesis discovered stances, awaken an uncanny feeling, which recalls that by psychoanalysis between the ego and what is unconscious and re- sense of helplessness sometimes experienced in dreams.
It is true that the distinction is to some extent effaced by the Once, as I was walking through the deserted streets of a circumstance that derivatives of what is repressed are foremost among provincial town in Italy which was strange to me, on a hot the things reprehended by the ego-criticizing faculty.
Nothing but in itself indifferent, happen close together, if we come painted women were to be seen at the windows of the across the number 62 several times in a single day, or if we small houses, and I hastened to leave the narrow street at begin to notice that everything which has a number— the next turning. But after having wandered about for a addresses, hotel-rooms, compartments in railway-trains— while without being directed, I suddenly found myself always has the same one, or one which at least contains the back in the same street, where my presence was now be- same figures.
I hurried away once more, but a man is utterly hardened and proof against the lure of su- only to arrive yet a third time by devious paths in the same perstition he will be tempted to ascribe a secret meaning to place. Now, however, a feeling overcame me which I can this obstinate recurrence of a number, taking it, perhaps, as only describe as uncanny, and I was glad enough to aban- an indication of the span of life allotted to him.
Or take the don my exploratory walk and get straight back to the pi- case that one is engaged at the time in reading the works of azza I had left a short while before. Other situations having Hering, the famous physiologist, and then receives within in common with my adventure an involuntary return to the the space of a few days two letters from two different same situation, but which differ radically from it in other countries, each from a person called Hering; whereas one respects, also result in the same feeling of helplessness and has never before had any dealings with anyone of that of something uncanny.
As, for instance, when one is lost in name. Not long ago an ingenious scientist attempted to re- a forest in high altitudes, caught, we will suppose, by the duce coincidences of this kind to certain laws, and so de- mountain mist, and when every endeavor to find the prive them of their uncanny effect. Or when one wanders about in a dark, strange such recurrent similarities to infantile psychology is a room, looking for the door or the electric switch, and col- question I can only lightly touch upon in these pages; and I lides for the hundredth time with the same piece of furni- must refer the reader instead to another pamphlet,14 now ture—a situation which, indeed, has been made irresistibly ready for publication, in which this has been gone into in comic by Mark Twain, through the wild extravagance of detail, but in a different connection.
It must be explained his narration. For instance, we of in the tendencies of small children; a principle, too, which course attach no importance to the event when we give up is responsible for a part of the course taken by the analyses a coat and get a cloakroom ticket with the number, say, 62; of neurotic patients. Taken in all, the foregoing prepares us or when we find that our cabin on board ship is numbered 13 But the impression is altered if two such events, each P.
Kammerer, Das Gesetz der Serie Vienna, They are never surprised when they invariably repetition-compulsion is perceived as uncanny. His own explanation, that the too fortunate man has perstition is the dread of the evil eye. We Whoever possesses something at once valuable and fragile will therefore turn to another example in a less grandiose is afraid of the envy of others, in that he projects on to setting. In the case history of an obsessional neurotic,15 I them the envy he would have felt in their place.
A feeling have described how the patient once stayed in a hy- like this betrays itself in a look even though it is not put dropathic establishment and benefited greatly by it.
He had into words; and when a man attracts the attention of others the good sense, however, to attribute his improvement not by noticeable, and particularly by unattractive, attributes, to the therapeutic properties of the water, but to the situa- they are ready to believe that his envy is rising to more tion of his room, which immediately adjoined that of very than usual heights and that this intensity in it will convert amiable nurse.
So on his second visit to the establishment it into effective action. What is feared is thus a secret in- he asked for the same room but was told that it was already tention of harming someone, and certain signs are taken to occupied by an old gentleman, whereupon he gave vent to mean that such an intention is capable of becoming an act.
And that impression of uncanniness would used by one of my patients. And now we find ourselves on have been stronger still if less time had elapsed between well-known ground. Our analysis of instances of the un- his exclamation and the untoward event, or if he had been canny has led us back to the old, animistic conception of able to produce innumerable similar coincidences. It would seem as though each one of us has been or two more examples of the uncanny.
In the canny in it is too much mingled with and in part covered first place, if psychoanalytic theory is correct in maintain- by what is purely gruesome. There is scarcely any other ing that every emotional affect, whatever its quality, is matter, however, upon which our thoughts and feelings transformed by repression into morbid anxiety, then have changed so little since the very earliest times, and in among such cases of anxiety there must be a class in which which discarded forms have been so completely preserved the anxiety can be shown to come from something re- under a thin disguise, as that of our relation to death.
Two pressed which recurs. This class of morbid anxiety would things account for our conservatism: the strength of our then be no other than what is uncanny, irrespective of original emotional reaction to it, and the insufficiency of whether it originally aroused dread or some other affect. In our scientific knowledge about it. Biology has not yet been the second place, if this is indeed the secret nature of the able to decide whether death is the inevitable fate of every uncanny, we can understand why the usage of speech has living being or whether it is only a regular but yet perhaps extended das Heimliche into its opposite das Unheimli- avoidable event in life.
Religions continue to dis- 17 Cf. In our great 18 Cf. But the question of sion, especially towards the close of their lives, that a con- these secret powers brings us back again to the realm of tact of this kind is not utterly impossible. Since practically animism. It is her intuition that he possesses secret power all of us still think as savages do on this topic, it is no mat- of this kind that makes Mephistopheles so uncanny to the ter for surprise that the primitive fear of the dead is still so pious Gretchen.
Most likely our fear still contains the old The uncanny effect of epilepsy and of madness has the belief that the deceased becomes the enemy of his survivor same origin. The ordinary person sees in them the work- and wants to carry him off to share his new life with him. The Middle Ages quite consis- that necessary condition for enabling a primitive feeling to tently ascribed all such maladies to daemonic influences, recur in the shape of an uncanny effect.
But repression is and in this their psychology was not so far out. Indeed, I there, too. All so-called educated people have ceased to should not be surprised to hear that psychoanalysis, which believe, officially at any rate, that the dead can become concerned with laying bare these hidden forces, has itself visible as spirits, and have hedged round any such appear- become uncanny to many people for that very reason.
As we already know, this kind of turn something fearful into an uncanny thing. To many people the idea of being buried ascribe evil motives to him.
But that is not all; we must not alive while appearing to be dead is the most uncanny thing only credit him with bad intentions but must attribute to of all. And yet psychoanalysis has taught us that this terri- these intentions capacity to achieve their aim in virtue of certain special powers.
This unheimlich place, however, is like to add, though, strictly speaking, it has been included the entrance to the former heim [home] of all human be- in our statements about animism and mechanisms in the ings, to the place where everyone dwelt once upon a time mind that have been surmounted; for I think it deserves and in the beginning.
In or when a symbol takes over the full functions and signifi- this case, too, the unheimlich is what was once heimisch, cance of the thing it symbolizes, and so on. The infantile element in this, which also holds sway in the minds of neurotics, is the III over-accentuation of psychical reality in comparison with physical reality—a feature closely allied to the belief in the Having followed the discussion as far as this the reader omnipotence of thoughts.
In the midst of the isolation of will have felt certain doubts arising in his mind about war-time a number of the English Strand Magazine fell much that has been said; and he must now have an oppor- into my hands; and, amongst other not very interesting tunity of collecting them and bringing them forward. Towards then emerged from it, and that everything that is uncanny evening they begin to smell an intolerable and very typical fulfils this condition.
But these factors do not solve the odour that pervades the whole flat; things begin to get in problem of the uncanny. For our proposition is clearly not their way and trip them up in the darkness; they seem to convertible. Not everything that fulfils this condition—not see a vague form gliding up the stairs—in short, we are everything that is connected with repressed desires and ar- given to understand that the presence of the table causes chaic forms of thought belonging to the past of the indi- ghostly crocodiles to haunt the place, or that the wooden vidual and of the race—is therefore uncanny.
It was a thoroughly silly story, but the uncanny feel- most every example adduced in support of our hypothesis ing it produced was quite remarkable. Or again, it works as a of the princess who wants to hold him fast, most readers means of emphasis, and so on. Another consideration is will agree with me that the episode has no trace of uncan- this: whence come the uncanny influences of silence, niness.
Yet our notwithstanding that they are also the most frequent ac- own fairy-tales are crammed with instantaneous wish- companiment of the expression of fear in infancy?
And are fulfillments which produce no uncanny effect whatever. In It is evident that we must be prepared to admit that there his annoyance at her forwardness her husband wishes it are other elements besides those set down here determin- may hang on her nose. It would take me beyond the scope of this paper to investigate the foundation of these premises.
Suffice to say that many developmental psychologists and philosophers of mind would no doubt be wary of these commitments. Rather, what I want to show presently is that even if we accept these premises, return of the repressed still falls short as a theory of the uncanny. Apart from its dubious foundations, the biggest problem faced by the theory is that it fails to explain what is distinctive about uncanny phenomena.
Given that there is nothing peculiar either about the kinds of complexes, or about the way these complexes are repressed, the revival of which results in a feeling of the uncanny, if anything is going to distinguish uncanny experiences as one set of instances which involve something repressed which returns, this would presumably have to do with the manner in which the repressed complex is revived in the mind.
Freud does in fact suggest such a distinguishing feature in his essay when discussing the factor of recurrence or repetition in relation to uncanny phenomena. Here it seems that Freud allows that any instance of something repressed which recurs will give rise to uncanniness.
But surely Freud cannot maintain this. Do not many repressed complexes recur in one fashion or another? Is it not, for example, in the very nature of a neurotic symptom that something repressed recurs?
Ultimately, Freud fails to provide an account for what makes some repressed complex that is revived in the mind be a cause of uncanniness rather than some other kind of response or action. Once the distinction between uncanny phenomena that stem from repressed infantile complexes and those that stem from surmounted primitive beliefs is applied, it turns out that only a small minority of those that Freud discusses in his essay falls into the former category.
The theory of surmounted primitive beliefs, on the other hand, accounts for the bulk of the uncanny phenomena that Freud identifies. But there are a number of crucial differences between repressed complexes and surmounted beliefs. Surmounted beliefs are not transformed through unconscious processes of the dream-work in the way that the manifest contents of repressed complexes are.
Unlike repressed complexes, primitive beliefs are tied up with understanding of how the world works—of what does or does not exist in reality. For repressed complexes to be activated, all that is required is that some image, motif, or idea activates in the unconscious the latent thought content of the repressed complex; it does not matter how or in what context this activation occurs, merely the activation of the thought content is enough.
Here, in contrast, the stimulus must have some claim to truth or reality; the mere thought of something, say, a ghost, will not be enough. Moreover, not everyone is equally susceptible to surmounted primitive beliefs. These key differences between surmounted beliefs and repressed complexes entail a number of benefits for the former over the latter as a theory of the uncanny. The theory of surmounted primitive beliefs does not require that one subscribe to a developmental account of universal infantile sexual complexes, or a theory of mind which accommodates the unconscious processes of the dream-work through which these complexes may be repressed.
I will discuss these problematic aspects of surmounted primitive beliefs, and suggest how these problems may best be responded to, in the next section. Because the content is not transformed through unconscious processes, surmounted primitive beliefs pertain directly to uncanny phenomena, and not through some speculative chain of association which relies on the epistemically-tenuous hermeneutical practice of the analyst. On this model, a ghost means a ghost, not a penis. Whereas, owing to the contingency of the process of repression, presumably almost anything can become an object of a repressed infantile complex.
When considering the kinds of phenomena that we tend to experience as uncanny, that the object of uncanny feelings should be so radically contingent on the processes of the dream- work strains credibility.
So why do we not associate any of these motifs with the uncanny? Why this should be the case, however, Freud never explains, and one gets the sense he may be covering his tracks. Perhaps most importantly, return of the repressed does not tell us anything of what is distinctive about uncanny objects, whereas surmounted primitive beliefs fit much more closely the phenomena which the theory seeks to explain, given that we associate the uncanny with the supernatural and the paranormal.
It offers a much richer explanation for what makes something be experienced as uncanny, from the first-person point of view. It offers an explanation for why, for example, the same phenomenon may be uncanny to one person but not to another, depending on their beliefs about what is possible.
The same ghost- like apparition that is uncanny to me may not be to an avid ghost-hunter, say. The same apparent act of telepathy that one finds uncanny in real life one may not find uncanny in the context of, say, a magic show. Moreover, this uncertainty about what is real that is necessary to experience something as uncanny according to the theory of surmounted primitive beliefs predicts an interesting and important feature of the uncanny in fiction.
Fictional worlds, such as fairy tales, that openly adopt an animistic worldview generally preclude uncanny effects because they preclude the necessary conflict of judgement about what is real in the story; we simply take it for granted that ghosts and magic do exist in these fictional worlds. In a broad sense, the uncanniness of the story can be understood in terms of a blurring of the distinction between reality and imagination.
More specifically, the dubious appearance of the Sandman in the form of Coppelius and Coppola appears to confirm the surmounted childhood belief in the existence of such fabled monsters. It has not been my aim in this section to defend the theory wholesale, however. Rather, my aim has been to show that, compared to the return of the repressed, surmounted primitive beliefs faces fewer serious objections and carries greater explanatory power in respect of the uncanny.
I commented above that one may reasonably have doubts about the developmental commitments of the theory. In general, it can be said that animism as a worldview originates from the overvaluation of psychical reality over material reality; from the assumption that the material world operates in the same way that humans do.
In contrast to the process of repressing some ideational content, the process of surmounting a belief is relatively easy to accommodate in terms of theory of mind, for it does not require the same special, unconscious operations of the dream-work as repression does.
Surmounted beliefs can be accommodated, to use more current terminology, as something like partial dispositional beliefs. For example, I do not believe in ghosts, but I have the disposition to entertain the existence of ghosts if I see a ghost-like apparition floating down the corridor one night. First, is Freud right to characterize the beliefs of traditional peoples in terms of animism and magic? According to one traditional view in psychology, notably elaborated by Jean Piaget, children are prone to magical thinking, to see inanimate objects as animate beings, and are unable to properly distinguish between reality and make-believe.
Even children as young as three can reliably distinguish ghosts, witches, and monsters as make-believe, and things like balloons, cups, and scissors as real. Both the biological theory of recapitulation and the evolutionary theory of Lamarck have been largely discredited; and even if this were not the case, it is not clear that Freud is justified in applying these theories to the psychological realm. The picture starts to look bleak for surmounted primitive beliefs.
But all is not lost. More substantially, work in developmental psychology can be used to support the idea that children do hold an animistic view of the world which is later surmounted. Even though young children can reliably distinguish between fantasy and reality, it is also true to an extent that children do tend to believe in magic, to see inanimate objects as animate beings, and to confuse reality and make-believe. When asked to imagine a creature in a box, many four- and six-year-olds admitted, after being left alone with the box for a couple of minutes, that they wondered whether there really was a creature inside.
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