Research Paper on “Applying Freud's 'The Uncanny' Psychoanalytical Theory to Henry James 'The Turn of the Screw'”

Introduction

Uncanny (Das Unheimliche) is an adjective noun in the German language, used by Sigmund Freud as a conceptual term to express in the field of aesthetic feeling a particular attitude of most generic sense of fear, which occurs when one thing (or a person, a feeling, a fact or a situation) is perceived as familiar and alien at the same time causing general anxiety combined with an unpleasant feeling of confusion and alienation.

While not identifying the root unconscious, Ernst Jentsch was the first to introduce in psychology the concept of perturbing defined as the intellectual uncertainty whether an object is evidently animated really alive or not, or, on the contrary, if an inanimate object may be in some way with a life of its own. Jentsch refers to the impression left by the wax figures, the ingeniously constructed dolls and automata. Disruptive effects are also often obtained when the observer is placed in front of the continue repetitions, "Automatic" in the same situation, i.e., of the same movement. So Jentsch explains the feeling of disturbance that some experience before seizures or manifestations of madness (Freud, p. 1-5).

Jentsch, highlights how the narrative tool to generate a disturbing sensation is used in literature by some novelists introducing figures in their stories, the nature of human being or robot is not detailed or clarified in some way, leaving the reader in doubt and unable to do. Since the situation or object has disturbing connotations family and strangers together, generates an intellectual uncertainty, that the psychology of the next century would be defined as a cognitive dissonance in the person who experiences it. Jentsch analyzes the stories of ETA Hoffman particularly The Sandman is characterized in that the doll Olympia defined as the disturbing element of the story. The concept is reworked in 1919 by Freud, who gives him certain notoriety by integrating the theoretical edifice of psychoanalysis. Jentsch bases his analysis on The Sand Man Hoffmann, which he describes as "the incomparable master of the unheimlich in literature" (Freud, p. 1-5). Freud assumed (from clinical cases of obsessive and literature) that the origin of the uncanny is the return of the same, the same. For example, Freud was traveling in a train; he rose from his seat to challenge the controller. When he got up he saw a man outside the compartment, the silhouette unfriendly, unpleasant or disturbing. He saw this man without actually distinguish his features was actually his reflection as he returned the glass door. In this example, we can see the return of similar reflection (Freud, p. 1-5).

This essay by Freud was part of the first Freudian topography, prior to the redesign of thought that constitutes the second topography shows that the repression of a free representation leaves an affect that turns into anxiety (this is the discharge that causes anxiety). The return of the repressed, whether traumatic or not, was assigned the task of ...