ABSTRACT
The uncanny is unquestionably in the psychoanalytic domain, but Evil, is, strictly speaking, a theological concept. In any exegesis of the uncanny, of course one, one must start with Freud's 1919 essay on the uncanny, the Unheimlich. Unheimlich translates as "not familiar". But, as Freud points out, its opposite "Heimlich" has two meanings. First, what is familiar, and second, what is hidden or kept out of sight: ergo forbidden. The uncanny, then, is "that class of the terrifying that leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar". But despite the absence of the cornerstones of Freud's theory in his Unheimlich essay, Freud brilliantly conflated his theory to Greek mythology, a European cultural heritage that exploited its intense uncanny affects. Freud dreaded the likelihood that American psychoanalysis would be utopian, espouse a feel-good banality. As Freud tried to warn with his much-disputed Death Instinct, life is a lot more complicated than that.
