1 h 19 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 1 h 19 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Why does a familiar face, a watching doll, or a repeated coincidence suddenly make your skin prickle?
In The Uncanny, Sigmund Freud explores a fear that needs no obvious danger. A stranger looks exactly like you. A coincidence happens too often. Freud follows these unsettling moments through language, daily life, folklore and fiction, asking what makes something familiar feel so deeply strange.
He examines Ernst Jentsch’s idea that uncertainty lies behind the feeling, then turns to German words and a story by E. T. A. Hoffmann. His own argument points inward: the uncanny, he proposes, is something once familiar that the mind pushes away, only to meet it again.
What you’ll discover
- A word with secrets Follow Freud into dictionaries, where the familiar and the strange draw unexpectedly close.
- The trouble with doubles Explore why seeing your likeness elsewhere can turn recognition into a source of fear.
- When repetition feels threatening Consider how repeated coincidences and losing your way become examples in Freud’s argument.
- Wishes, magic and the dead Examine Freud’s account of beliefs that give thoughts the power to cause harm.
- Fiction changes the rules Discover why Freud distinguishes the fears of everyday life from those stirred by stories.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this if you love ghost stories, wonder why dolls and doubles give you chills, or like watching a thinker test his own theory.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The familiar returns in disguise
- Home and secrecy share a word
- The Sandman awakens a childhood fear
- The double changes comfort into threat
- Unwanted repetition makes chance feel fated
- Repression makes the familiar feel foreign
- Fiction changes what feels uncanny
- The known appears where least expected
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The Uncanny
by Sigmund Freud · 1919
A man walks along a summer street, repeatedly returning to the same spot as a chill comes over him.
ChallengingUnder 2 hours to readEnglish
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In short
Have you ever turned a corner in a strange town and found yourself back where you started, with a chill you cannot explain? Sigmund Freud did, on a hot summer afternoon in a small Italian town.
The Uncanny at a glance
- Reading time
- About 50 min40 min fast, 1 h slow
- Length
- 12,200 words
- Library level
- Challenging long sentences, a rich vocabulary
- First published
- 1919by Sigmund Freud
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
The uncanny is a neglected corner of fear
Freud begins by admitting that his field has little to say about such feelings. The study of feeling prefers the beautiful and the grand. It pays far less attention to the repellent and the distressing. The uncanny belongs to the family of fear, but it is not the same as every fear.
Yet most of us sense a special shade in it, a fear that comes with strangeness inside something known.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1919
- Language
- English
- Level
- Challenging
Cite this edition
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-uncanny.
Freud, S. (2026). The uncanny. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-uncanny (Original work published 1919)
Freud, Sigmund. The Uncanny. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-uncanny.
@book{freud2026uncanny,
author = {Freud, Sigmund},
title = {The Uncanny},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-uncanny},
note = {First published 1919}
}
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What is the uncanny according to Freud?
Freud defines it as a kind of fear that goes back to something long known and familiar. It is a repressed idea or an overcome belief that returns and now feels strange, which is why the familiar can turn frightening.
What does unheimlich mean in German?
Unheimlich is the opposite of heimlich, which means homelike, familiar, and cozy. Heimlich can also mean hidden or secret, so the two words overlap, and unheimlich is used for what is eerie and uneasy.
What is The Sandman story in Freud's essay?
It is a tale by E. T. A. Hoffmann about the student Nathaniel, haunted from childhood by a figure who steals eyes, and about the doll Olimpia. Freud uses it as his main example of the uncanny in literature.
The author
Sigmund Freud
1856–1939 · Austrian founder of psychoanalysis
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) was an Austrian psychiatrist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Born in Freiberg, now Příbor in the Czech Republic, he lived and worked in Vienna before moving to London in 1938. He wrote The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) and Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905).
More by Sigmund Freud
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