‘At home in the uncanny’: Freud's account of das Unheimliche in the context of his theory of religious belief

Abstract

This paper serves as an exploration of Freud's comment that one of the functions of religious belief is to make humanity feel ‘at home in the uncanny’ ( heimisch im Unheimlichen). The first section examines the context of Freud's comment within The Future of an Illusion. Attention is then shifted to Freud's essay on ‘The “Uncanny”’, and to his conclusion that the ‘uncanny’ is the name for everything that ought to have remained secret and hidden but has come to light. A number of interpretations of the ‘at home’ remark are discussed, and it is suggested that religion might fruitfully be viewed as an attempt to come to terms with humanity's ‘transcendental homelessness’.