uncanny

  1. Adjective.  strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.
  2. Adjective.  (context, UK) Careless.
  3. Adjective.  (rfc-sense) (psychology, psychoanalysis) Simultaneously familiar and foreign, often uncomfortably so; ''translation of Freud's German unheimlich ("no longer secret").'''''2011''', Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, ''In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies'', [http://books.google.com.au/books?id=W6rOCI9x9-YC&pg=PA99&dq=%22something+that+should+have+remained+hidden+and+has+come+into+the+open%22+freud+-intitle:%22%22+-inauthor:%22%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=xeUIT_uTO-iriAf-1-mwCQ&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=%22something%20that%20should%20have%20remained%20hidden%20and%20has%20come%20into%20the%20open%22%20freud%20-intitle%3A%22%22%20-inauthor%3A%22%22&f=false page 99], — [The uncanny is] something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed. The link with repression now illuminates Schelling′s definition of the uncanny as ‘something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open.’ (Freud: 2003, 147 f).

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This entry was last updated on RefTopia from its source on 3/20/2012.