Peer Gynt and Freud’s the Uncanny

In this article, we will analyze some central scenes in Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt (Ibsen [1867a] 2007) in light of Sigmund Freud’s ideas about Das Unheimliche, usually translated as the uncanny (Freud 1919). Peer Gynt is a work where the story twists and turns as it proceeds, mirroring the protagonist’s volatile mind. We will demonstrate an affinity between Freud’s conception of the uncanny and the way Ibsen composes crucial scenes in his text. Our focus is on scene changes followed by remarkable shifts in atmosphere. Based on Freud’s thorough examination of the German concept unheimlich, and its opposite heimlich, we will analyze the dynamics of the scene in the woods where Peer Gynt is building a hut. Our point is that both the sequence and the contents of the scene can be understood using Freud’s description of the transition from heimlich to unheimlich. A crucial point is that what appears to be cosy and comforting actually conceals its opposite, something uncanny. Freud defines the uncanny as “the name for everything that ought to have remained (... ) secret and hidden but has come to light” (Freud 1919, 223), inspired by the romantic philosopher Schelling. Schelling was concerned with the “mythology of mind”, a romantic view of the unconscious. In his examination of the uncanny, Freud restricts his interest to the content of intolerable thoughts: “What is involved is an actual repression of some content of thought and a return of this repressed content” (Freud 1919, 248). From these specifications, we can conclude that Freud deals with central aspects of mental content. First, the uncanny is