The Uncanny

Sigmund Freud’s essay starts with a question: how can it be that two words that appear to be opposites actually, in some contexts, mean the same thing? The German word for the uncanny – unheimlich – at times means the same thing as the word heimlich, meaning homely or familiar. From this beginning, Freud goes on to survey the things which humans find the most unheimlich, and so reaches his famous conclusion; the uncanny is that ‘class of the frightening which leads back to what is known of old and long familiar’.