Abstract:

In addition to being a treatment method, psychoanalysis, which is associated with different disciplines, turns into a productive field in terms of literary studies as a result of Sigmund Freud's use of literary products while analyzing psychoanalytic concepts since the beginning of the 20th century. The psychoanalytic literary theory, which is the application of the methods of psychoanalysis for literary criticism, reveals the unconscious motives of the author and his characters, the contents beyond the superficial, with its detailed theoretical approach. While examining literary works in the context of this theoretical point of view, Freud especially focuses on the fantastic. Suspicion and mystery arising from the invisible and unknown events being visible and known in fantasy has been the subject of psychoanalysis. Freud, who associates the strange and worrisome situations that occur especially in fantastic literature with the mental state of the hero and the author, deals with such situations under the title of uncanny and details it as a psychoanalytic element. In his article titled Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny), which he wrote in 1919, Freud defines the uncanny as “that class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar” (Freud, 1999: 326). In this study, firstly, the meaning and content of the uncanny were emphasized, then the story of Argentine writer Julio Cortázar's House Taken Over was discussed through the themes suggested by this concept. By pushing the unacceptable impulses and thoughts of the characters into the unconscious, the repressed one is tried to be interpreted and the uncanny situation that arises in relation to the return of the repressed as a result of this situation is examined.