The Uncanny: Freud’s Psychoanalytical Theory

Sigmund Freud first defined ‘the uncanny’ as “[…] the feeling of unease that arises when something familiar suddenly becomes strange and unfamiliar.” (Masschelein, 2011, p. 1).

As the ‘old world’ became the ‘new’, the figure of the haunted castle became the figure of the haunted house. Uncanny is the German translation of ‘Unheimlich’, literally meaning ‘unhomely’ and this can be used well with everyday items from the home by making them ‘haunted’.

Masschelein also discusses how at the turn of the century, uncanny started to be associated with haunting more often. “In various disciplines, the concept of the uncanny fits within a larger research program that focuses on haunting, the spectral, ghosts, and telepathy as material phenomena in culture and society.” (2011, p. 144).

When it came to translating gothic stories for television, producers were concerned about how they would do so effectively. “how can one translate the kind of supernatural ghost stories produced by M.R. James or Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu for example, on to the small screen, while retaining their sense of the unknown?” (Wheatley, 2006, p. 26). Wheatley continues to discuss how this style of Gothic narrative became a problem “which saw the BBC, and later the commercial companies, struggle to maintain a sense of propriety and decency while offering their audiences the spine-chillingly supernatural as entertainment.” (p. 26).

The television was viewed as the perfect medium for gothic stories, but only when the television became a common household appliance “In fact, in Britain, it was not until the introduction of commercial television that the Gothic anthology series was again reconsidered as a viable form of television entertainment.” (Wheatley, 2011, p. 33).

American Gothic Television had a focus on Family Narratives. This tied into the ‘American Dream’, or rather the depiction of the American Dream being destroyed – an ‘American Nightmare’. (Davison, 2014, p. 489).

Application and Analysis

The theory of uncanny can be applied to an episode of Doctor Who (Moffat & Macdonald, 2007) titled “Blink”. In the episode, an alien species threatens the Doctor and the TARDIS by taking the form of stone statue angels – but when you’re not looking, or rather cannot see them, they move closer to attack. This is an excellent example of what Masschelein was discussing “A recurring element of the uncanny in the visual arts is the importance of the (human) figure.” (2011, p. 144) and “[…] the feeling of unease that arises when something familiar suddenly becomes strange and unfamiliar.” (2011, p. 1) and also a good example of how the genre translates to British television. At the time episodes were averaging 7.96 million viewers (Doctor Who Statistics, 2022) and the creators worked carefully to create an uncanny atmosphere, with much of the action taking place in an abandoned and rundown house.

An example of the uncanny can be found in Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), especially with the use of a human figure. The Pale Man in the film resembles a human, but leaves viewers unsure if the character is human, returning to Masschelein’s quote of how a “feeling of unease [that] arises when something familiar suddenly becomes strange and unfamiliar”.