Analysts rarely feel the need to engage in aesthetic inquiries, even if we do not limit aesthetics to the theory of the beautiful, but instead define it as the theory of the properties of feeling. The analyst is involved with other areas of mental life and is little concerned with the vague and evaporated emotional reactions that mostly make up the object of aesthetics.

However, there are circumstances that compel them to turn their attention to a specific field of aesthetics, somewhat detached from its core and neglected by its literature. One such field is the uncanny.

There is no doubt that the uncanny falls into the category of elements that evoke fear, terror, and horror, and it is equally certain that the specific word is not always used in a meaning that can be precisely defined, often concluding in synonymy with the terrifying.

However, one is entitled to assume that it contains a peculiar core that justifies the use of a term with significant meaning. We would like to learn what this common core is that allows us to discern something uncanny in that which provokes fear.