Uncanny

[2][3] Ernst Jentsch set out the concept of the uncanny, later elaborated on by Sigmund Freud in his 1919 essay "Das Unheimliche", which explores the eeriness of dolls and waxworks.

[3] Expanding on the idea, psychoanalytic theorist Jacques Lacan wrote that the uncanny places us "in the field where we do not know how to distinguish bad and good, pleasure from displeasure", resulting in an irreducible anxiety that gestures to the Real.

[9] In The Will to Power manuscript, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche refers to nihilism as "the uncanniest of all guests" and, earlier, in On the Genealogy of Morals he argues it is the "will to truth" that has destroyed the metaphysics that underpins the values of Western culture.

[10] He includes incidents wherein one becomes lost and accidentally retraces one's steps, and instances wherein random numbers recur, seemingly meaningfully (here Freud may be said to be prefiguring the concept that Jung would later refer to as synchronicity).

[3] Such uncanny elements are perceived as being threatening by our super-ego ridden with oedipal guilt because it fears symbolic castration by punishment for deviating from societal norms.

[...] In general we are reminded that the word heimlich is not unambiguous, but belongs to two sets of ideas, which, without being contradictory, are yet very different: on the one hand it means what is familiar and agreeable, and on the other, what is concealed and kept out of sight.

A study of dreams, phantasies and myths has taught us that anxiety about one's eyes, the fear of going blind [forming a central theme in "The Sandman"], is often enough a substitute for the dread of being castrated.

[13] Rahimi presents a wide range of evidence from various contexts to demonstrate how uncanny experiences are typically associated with themes and metaphors of vision, blindness, mirrors and other optical tropes.

He also presents historical evidence showing strong presence of ocular and specular themes and associations in the literary and psychological tradition out of which the notion of 'the uncanny' emerged.

According to Rahimi, instances of the uncanny like doppelgängers, ghosts, déjà vu, alter egos, self-alienations and split personhoods, phantoms, twins, living dolls, etc.

Mori has stated that he made the observation independently of Jentsch and Freud,[15] though a link was forged by Reichardt and translators who rendered bukimi as uncanny.