Uncanny

What struck me most about Freud is how remarkably considerate he is of his unknowing audience. That is to say, he holds firm beliefs about his topic, but is also deeply attuned to a reader who is facing it for the first time, or to a reader who generally is skeptical of psychoanalysis, and of him. He only spends a brief amount of time lingering on semantics before he has moved on to imaginative literature as a medium through which anybody can access the uncanny, and comprehend difficult distinctions between the uncanny and the ordinarily frightening. Freud sustains his arguments by reiterating points and making them accessible to those unfamiliar with the intricacies of psychoanalysis, and does so by making these discoveries, or the process of understanding them, a collective, group effort. Hence, Freud will seldom use "I" and instead opts for "we," as if he is--quite affectionately--holding our hands while he walks us through his expansive theory. Stylistically, Freud's tone is authorial and sophisticated without ever really being alienating.

Curiously, Freud also holds a certain skepticism towards his theories--one that we can't be certain is genuine or contrived--in his transitional or broader topic sentences:

"Now, however, it is time to turn from these aspects of the matter, which are in any case difficult to judge, and look for some undeniable instances of the uncanny, in the hope that an analysis of them will decide whether our hypothesis is a valid one."

This sentence doesn't quite feel suspensive, but is certainly divided in such a way in which we can see how cautious Freud needs to be in relaying his information. With that, his sentences are often loaded with qualifications and details that are, perhaps, meant to console the reader or have them understand that this topic is reasonably farfetched beyond the boundaries of psychoanalysis. It is also peculiar that Freud uses "in hope," as though his theory's success rides on belief, coincidence, fate, or some other abstraction.

It appears as though Freud's semi-humble tone is put-on in some places to ensure that reader that he is not necessarily pompous or haughty, but in other places, he is less concerned with seeming cautious.

"It may be true that the uncanny [unheimlich] is something which is secretly familiar [heimlich-heimisch], which has undergone repression and then returned from it, and that everything that is uncanny fulfils this condition. But the selection of material on this basis does not enable us to solve the problem of the uncanny. For our proposition is clearly not convertible. Not everything that fulfils this condition — not everything that recalls repressed desires and surmounted modes of thinking belonging to the prehistory of the individual and of the race — is on that account uncanny."

As he oscillates between what specifically is and is not uncanny, we can see how the style of argument takes a very conventional form, or one that we often see in persuasive writing. Again, he qualifies a separate truth of the uncanny that might ultimately obstruct his argument, but only to immediately counter it by stating how one notion is capable of disabling him, or "us" from solving "the problem of the uncanny." His voice then hardens up with a passive, suspensive statement that again ensures what isn't uncanny.

I found his arguments in part III to be the most exciting and fathomable.

"We have clearly not exhausted the possibilities of poetic licence and the privileges enjoyed by story-writers in evoking or in excluding an uncanny feeling. In the main we adopt an unvarying passive attitude towards real experience and are subject to the influence of our physical environment. But the story-teller has a peculiarly directive power over us; by means of the moods he can put us into, he is able to guide the current of our emotions, to dam it up in one direction and make it flow in another, and he often obtains a great variety of effects from the same material."

It's no easy feat to explain what happens to us as readers when we read fiction, and yet Freud accomplishes this pretty well. Freud begins his point by stating what it is that we don't do, as if to appease a reader in opposition, and then moves on to quite generally state what it is that we actually do: adopt a passive attitude towards reality. The final, most convincing statement adopts the uncharacteristically metaphorical language of a flowing river. The phrases themselves don't hit us hard because of how gradually they are delivered, but the slow, elaborative quality of the cumulative sentence is actually very powerful in piling on evidence that substantiates his insights.