Twilight of the self: the uncanny

Abstract

Sigmund Freud dealt with the subject of self, thus he contributed to the western philosophy which had always associated self with logos. During the 1880s, Freud was close to the idea that a self lacking itself existed while he was challenging the traditional understanding of the self with the cogito. Freud, as a psychoanalyst, approached the presence of the self by observing and trying to decode the human. His starting point was the word, uncanny so he handled just a word to start questioning the self whose presence and absence are equal when Freud’s views are taken into consideration. Freud began to resolve his question by searching the word’s meaning. His initial crux was the German word ‘heimlich’ which he, then, found out to mean ‘unheimlich’. Consequently, he united the two different words forming the term uncanny. At this juncture, this research reflects on how Freud concludes - in terms of functioning and purpose - that ‘self’ means ‘otherness’ bearing in mind the effects of the uncanny on the multiplicity of the self, the decay of logos and mind, the truthfulness of images and meanings, and the unity of the conscious and the unconscious as well as focusing on whether the uncanny is an interdisciplinary term or not, as it is still a widely used term in our modern era in different fields of studies such as literature and visual arts. The research consists of three parts to try to show what the uncanny is and how this psychoanalytical term could be used in literature and other fields and the possible projections in the future.