- What is the difference between “heimlich” and “unheimlich”? How does Freud go about exploring the relationships between these two words and the concepts that they refer to? What does the bleeding over from one term to the other tell us about the underlying psychological dynamics these words attempt to describe?
- What makes a given object, place, or experience “uncanny”? In section two, what examples does Freud give of uncanniness? Why, according to Freud, is Jentsch wrong that dolls are the locus classicus of the “uncanny”?
- What is the relationship between uncanniness and the figure of the “double” or twin?
- Explain Freud’s anecdote of getting lost on a walk in an unfamiliar place. What does this seemingly everyday and ordinary event tell Freud (and us) about the relationship between the ego and the unconscious? What does this story have to do with uncanniness?
- At the end of the essay, Freud circles back to consider the opposition with which he began: das Heimliche and das Unheimliche. What does he conclude about the “secret nature of the uncanny” and the way the psyche reckons with this “secret”?
- In general, how does the form of this essay relate to its content? Why does Freud waver between particular and general, illustration and argument, anecdote and abstraction?
