Untitled - Sexey's School Moodle

fulfillment. This relationship can be characterized as one which alternates between
revulsion and fascination; whereas the former is provoked by a fear of castigation or
guilt, the latter is triggered by instinctual drives and, to another extent, by what Conrad
called “the fascination of the abomination”—both inherent human impulses. Freud
concludes that when unconscious wishes are fulfilled, they are expressed as a discomfort.
In dreams, they may appear in what he calls “anxiety-dreams” and in literature they may
manifest themselves in the “uncanny.” Freud alludes to Friedrich von Schelling’s
definition of the uncanny as “something which ought to have remained hidden but has
come to light” (Infantile Neurosis 241) and he creates a link with psychoanalysis by
relating the uncanny in literature to being the discomforting manifestations of repressed
desires. The potential of such material to produce shock is attributed to the fact that for
Freud, the uncanny provokes a feeling of “unfamiliarity” and “uneasiness,” which the
reader might find disturbing and unsettling. Freud argues that by using such devices, an
author is able to exert greater directive power over the reader’s emotions and stir him/her
in different directions: “by the means of the moods he can put us into, he is able to guide
the current of our emotions” (251).
While Freud elaborates on the compelling power of transgressions that are taboo-
breaking as they appear in literature, Kristeva refers to this property as the “abject”: “the
abject confronts us, on the one hand, with those fragile states where man strays on the
territories of the animal” (12). Although Freud appeared to be much more accepting of a
return to primal urges in his earlier writings, he seemed gradually to distance himself
from his former views in his later work. Nevertheless, according to the likes of
Nietzsche, Bataille and Foucault, transgressions that break social taboos by exposing
76