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DICTIONARY

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Unheimliche, Das
Term from Sigmund Freud's psychoanalysis and text on "Das Unheimliche". It literally means the 'un-homely' and describes the uncanny that is closely related to the domestic, das Heimliche. The term defines its meaning as an opposition to the familiar; das Unheimliche is repressed aspects in objects or people surfacing when the border between imagination and reality is obliterated.

Das Unheimliche was originally employed to diagnose and treat anxious or obsessive-compulsive patients. Freud was inspired by the animist faith among 'primitive' peoples that 'something' in nature or in everyday objects has greater power than man.

In other words das Unheimliche is not to be regarded as a fantastic or supernatural entity but as the familiar when it becomes its own menacing strangeness.

Carin Ellberg, Vibeke Tandberg, Mona Hatoum