ITALIAN R5B Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Sigmund Freud, Spring Break, Lawrence Venuti
21 May 2018
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#26 3/23 Friday
“The sky, horizon, countryside no longer seemed the same to him; it was not that they seemed
changed in some fundamental way, but that he no longer saw them with the same feelings as
an hour ago. To make use of a more common figure of speech, he no longer saw them with the
same eyes” (Tarchetti 25).
Sigmund Freud, “The Uncanny”
“The ‘uncanny’... is undoubtedly related to what is frightening–to what arouses dread and horror;
equally certainly, too, the word is not always used in a clearly definable sense, so that it tends to
coincide with what excites fear in general. Yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is
present which justifies the use of a special conceptual term. One is curious to know what this
common core is which allows us to distinguish as ‘uncanny’ certain things which lie within the
field of what is frightening” (Freud 219).
“If psycho-analytic theory is correct in maintaining that every affect belonging to an emotional
impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it is repressed, into anxiety, then among instances
of frightening things there must be one class in which the frightening element can be shown to
be something repressed which recurs. This class of frightening things would then constitute the
uncanny... This uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and
old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of
repression” (Freud 241).
To rephrase Freud’s basic point in simpler terms, that which is uncanny is both familiar and
unfamiliar, and it is frightening precisely because of that ambivalence or duality.
“But this sensation I feel in my head, this weight, is peculiar… And what are these strange
desires I feel, this will I have never had, this species of confusion and doubleness I feel in all my
senses? Am I going mad?... Let us see, let us reorganize our thoughts... Our thoughts?! Yes, of
course… because I feel as if these ideas are not all mine. Yet… reorganizing them is sooner
said than done! It is impossible; in other words, I feel something disorganized in my brain... I
shall be more precise... it is organized differently than before... there is something superfluous,
overflowing, something that aims to make room for itself inside my head. It is not harmful, but it
nonetheless pushes, knocks very painfully against the walls of my skull... I feel as if I am a
double man. A double! How strange! And yet... yes, there is no doubt... at this moment I
understand how one can be double” (Tarchetti 26).
“And from that moment on the strange doubleness spread to all his senses; he saw double,
heard double, touched double, and – what was even more surprising – he thought double. That
is to say, the same sensation provoked in him two ideas, and these two ideas were developed
by to different faculties of reason and judged by two different consciences. In a word, he
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Document Summary
The sky, horizon, countryside no longer seemed the same to him; it was not that they seemed changed in some fundamental way, but that he no longer saw them with the same feelings as an hour ago. To make use of a more common figure of speech, he no longer saw them with the same eyes (tarchetti 25). Yet we may expect that a special core of feeling is present which justifies the use of a special conceptual term. One is curious to know what this common core is which allows us to distinguish as uncanny" certain things which lie within the field of what is frightening (freud 219). This class of frightening things would then constitute the uncanny This uncanny is in reality nothing new or alien, but something which is familiar and old-established in the mind and which has become alienated from it only through the process of repression (freud 241).
