Freud - Complete Works (615 page)

   What is
experienced
as
uncanny is much more simply conditioned but comprises far fewer
instances. We shall find, I think, that it fits in perfectly with
our attempt at a solution, and can be traced back without exception
to something familiar that has been repressed. But here, too, we
must make a certain important and psychologically significant
differentiation in our material, which is best illustrated by
turning to suitable examples.

The 'Uncanny'

3697

   Let us take the uncanny
associated with the omnipotence of thoughts, with the prompt
fulfilment of wishes, with secret injurious powers and with the
return of the dead. The condition under which the feeling of
uncanniness arises here is unmistakable. We - or our primitive
forefathers - once believed that these possibilities were
realities, and were convinced that they actually happened. Nowadays
we no longer believe in them, we have
surmounted
these modes
of thought; but we do not feel quite sure of our new beliefs, and
the old ones still exist within us ready to seize upon any
confirmation. As soon as something
actually happens
in our
lives which seems to confirm the old, discarded beliefs we get a
feeling of the uncanny; it is as though we were making a judgement
something like this: ‘So, after all, it is
true
that
one can kill a person by the mere wish!’ or, ‘So the
dead
do
live on and appear on the scene of their former
activities!’ and so on. Conversely, anyone who has completely
and finally rid himself of animistic beliefs will be insensible to
this type of the uncanny. The most remarkable coincidences of wish
and fulfilment, the most mysterious repetition of similar
experiences in a particular place or on a particular date, the most
deceptive sights and suspicious noises - none of these things will
disconcert him or raise the kind of fear which can be described as
‘a fear of something uncanny’. The whole thing is
purely an affair of ‘reality-testing’, a question of
the material reality of the phenomena.¹

  
¹
Since the uncanny effect of a
‘double’ also belongs to this same group it is
interesting to observe what the effect is of meeting one’s
own image unbidden and unexpected. Ernst Mach has related two such
observations in his
Analyse der Empfindungen
(1900, 3). On
the first occasion he was not a little startled when he realized
that the face before him was his own. The second time he formed a
very unfavourable opinion about the supposed stranger who entered
the omnibus, and thought ‘What a shabby-looking school-master
that man is who is getting in!’ - I can report a similar
adventure. I was sitting alone in my
wagon-lit
compartment
when a more than usually violent jolt of the train swung back the
door of the adjoining washing-cabinet, and an elderly gentleman in
a dressing-gown and a travelling cap came in. I assumed that in
leaving the washing-cabinet, which lay between the two
compartments, he had taken the wrong direction and come into my
compartment by mistake. Jumping up with the intention of putting
him right, I at once realized to my dismay that the intruder was
nothing but my own reflection in the looking-glass on the open
door. I can still recollect that I thoroughly disliked his
appearance. Instead, therefore, of being
frightened
by our
‘doubles’, both Mach and I simply failed to recognize
them as such. Is it not possible, though, that our dislike of them
was a vestigial trace of the archaic reaction which feels the
‘double’ to be something uncanny?

The 'Uncanny'

3698

   The state of affairs is different
when the uncanny proceeds from repressed infantile complexes, from
the castration complex, womb-phantasies, etc.; but experiences
which arouse this kind of uncanny feeling are not of very frequent
occurrence in real life. The uncanny which proceeds from actual
experience belongs for the most part to the first group.
Nevertheless the distinction between the two is theoretically very
important. Where the uncanny comes from infantile complexes the
question of material reality does not arise; its place is taken by
psychical reality. What is involved is an actual repression of some
content of thought and a return of this repressed content, not a
cessation of
belief in the reality
of such a content. We
might say that in the one case what had been repressed is a
particular ideational content, and in the other the belief in its
(material) reality. But this last phrase no doubt extends the term
‘repression’ beyond its legitimate meaning. It would be
more correct to take into account a psychological distinction which
can be detected here, and to say that the animistic beliefs of
civilized people are in a state of having been (to a greater or
lesser extent)
surmounted
. Our conclusion could then be
stated thus: an uncanny experience occurs either when infantile
complexes which have been repressed are once more revived by some
impression, or when primitive beliefs which have been surmounted
seem once more to be confirmed. Finally, we must not let our
predilection for smooth solutions and lucid exposition blind us to
the fact that these two classes of uncanny experience are not
always sharply distinguishable. When we consider that primitive
beliefs are most intimately connected with infantile complexes, and
are, in fact, based on them, we shall not be greatly astonished to
find that the distinction is often a hazy one.

   The uncanny as it is depicted in
literature
, in stories and imaginative productions, merits
in truth a separate discussion. Above all, it is a much more
fertile province than the uncanny in real life, for it contains the
whole of the latter and something more besides, something that
cannot be found in real life. The contrast between what has been
repressed and what has been surmounted cannot be transposed on to
the uncanny in fiction without profound modification; for the realm
of phantasy depends for its effect on the fact that its content is
not submitted to reality-testing. The somewhat paradoxical result
is that
in the first place a great deal that is not uncanny in
fiction would be so if it happened in real life; and in the second
place, that there are many more means of creating uncanny effects
in fiction than there are in real life
.

The 'Uncanny'

3699

   The imaginative writer has this
licence among many others, that he can select his world of
representation so that it either coincides with the realities we
are familiar with or departs from them in what particulars he
pleases. We accept his ruling in every case. In fairy tales, for
instance, the world of reality is left behind from the very start,
and the animistic system of beliefs is frankly adopted.
Wish-fulfilments, secret powers, omnipotence of thoughts, animation
of inanimate objects, all the elements so common in fairy stories,
can exert no uncanny influence here; for, as we have learnt, that
feeling cannot arise unless there is a conflict of judgement as to
whether things which have been ‘surmounted’ and are
regarded as incredible may not, after all, be possible; and this
problem is eliminated from the outset by the postulates of the
world of fairy tales. Thus we see that fairy stories, which have
furnished us with most of the contradictions to our hypothesis of
the uncanny, confirm the first part of our proposition - that in
the realm of fiction many things are not uncanny which would be so
if they happened in real life. In the case of these stories there
are other contributory factors, which we shall briefly touch upon
later.

   The creative writer can also
choose a setting which though less imaginary than the world of
fairy tales, does yet differ from the real world by admitting
superior spiritual beings such as daemonic spirits or ghosts of the
dead. So long as they remain within their setting of poetic
reality, such figures lose any uncanniness which they might
possess. The souls in Dante’s
Inferno
, or the
supernatural apparitions in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
,
Macbeth
or
Julius Caesar
, may be gloomy and terrible
enough, but they are no more really uncanny than Homer’s
jovial world of gods. We adapt our judgement to the imaginary
reality imposed on us by the writer, and regard souls, spirits and
ghosts as though their existence had the same validity as our own
has in material reality. In this case too we avoid all trace of the
uncanny.

   The situation is altered as soon
as the writer pretends to move in the world of common reality. In
this case he accepts as well all the conditions operating to
produce uncanny feelings in real life; and everything that would
have an uncanny effect in reality has it in his story. But in this
case he can even increase his effect and multiply it far beyond
what could happen in reality, by bringing about events which never
or very rarely happen in fact. In doing this he is in a sense
betraying us to the superstitiousness which we have ostensibly
surmounted; he deceives us by promising to give us the sober truth,
and then after all overstepping it. We react to his inventions as
we would have reacted to real experiences; by the time we have seen
through his trick it is already too late and the author has
achieved his object. But it must be added that his success is not
unalloyed. We retain a feeling of dissatisfaction, a kind of grudge
against the attempted deceit. I have noticed this particularly
after reading Schnitzler’s
Die Weissagung
and similar
stories which flirt with the supernatural. However, the writer has
one more means which he can use in order to avoid our recalcitrance
and at the same time to improve his chances of success. He can keep
us in the dark for a long time about the precise nature of the
presuppositions on which the world he writes about is based, or he
can cunningly and ingeniously avoid any definite information on the
point to the last. Speaking generally, however, we find a
confirmation of the second part of our proposition - that fiction
presents more opportunities for creating uncanny feelings than are
possible in real life.

The 'Uncanny'

3700

   Strictly speaking, all these
complications relate only to that class of the uncanny which
proceeds from forms of thought that have been surmounted. The class
which proceeds from repressed complexes is more resistant and
remains as powerful in fiction as in real experience, subject to
one exception. The uncanny belonging to the first class - that
proceeding from forms of thought that have been surmounted retains
its character not only in experience but in fiction as well, so
long as the setting is one of material reality; but where it is
given an arbitrary and artificial setting in fiction, it is apt to
lose that character.

   We have clearly not exhausted the
possibilities of poetic licence and the privileges enjoyed by
story-writers in evoking or in excluding an uncanny feeling. In the
main we adopt an unvarying passive attitude towards real experience
and are subject to the influence of our physical environment. But
the story-teller has a
peculiarly
directive power over us;
by means of the moods he can put us into, he is able to guide the
current of our emotions, to dam it up in one direction and make it
flow in another, and he often obtains a great variety of effects
from the same material. All this is nothing new, and has doubtless
long since been fully taken into account by students of aesthetics.
We have drifted into this field of research half involuntarily,
through the temptation to explain certain instances which
contradicted our theory of the causes of the uncanny. Accordingly
we will now return to the examination of a few of those
instances.

   We have already asked why it is
that the severed hand in the story of the treasure of Rhampsinitus
has no uncanny effect in the way that the severed hand has in
Hauff’s story. The question seems to have gained in
importance now that we have recognized that the class of the
uncanny which proceeds from repressed complexes is the more
resistant of the two. The answer is easy. In the Herodotus story
our thoughts are concentrated much more on the superior cunning of
the master-thief than on the feelings of the princess. The princess
may very well have had an uncanny feeling, indeed she very probably
fell into a swoon; but
we
have no such sensations, for we
put ourselves in the thief’s place, not in hers. In
Nestroy’s farce,
Der Zerrissene
, another means is used
to avoid any impression of the uncanny in the scene in which the
fleeing man, convinced that he is a murderer, lifts up one trap
door after another and each time sees what he takes to be the ghost
of his victim rising up out of it. He calls out in despair,
‘But I’ve only killed
one
man. Why this ghastly
multiplication?’ We know what went before this scene and do
not share his error, so what must be uncanny to him has an
irresistibly comic effect on us. Even a ‘real’ ghost,
as in Oscar Wilde’s
Canterville Ghost
, loses all power
of at least arousing
gruesome
feelings in us as soon as the
author begins to amuse himself by being ironical about it and
allows liberties to be taken with it. Thus we see how independent
emotional effects can be of the actual subject-matter in the world
of fiction. In fairy stories feelings of fear - including therefore
uncanny feelings - are ruled out altogether. We understand this,
and that is why we ignore any opportunities we find in them for
developing such feelings.