Terror, fascination, uncertainty: a reading of freud’s essay das unheimliche - Freud begun writing Das Unheimliche (The Uncanny, 1919) while he was writing Totem and Taboo, and concluded it interrupting his writing of Jenzeit der Lustprinzip (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, 1920). Das Unheimliche is seen as a chapter of a larger work, whose other chapters are the two over mentioned works and those on Leonardo (1910) and on Michleangelo (1914). Das Unheimliche is considered the expression of Freud’s attempt to overcome an obstacle which prevented him to formulate the law of repetition compulsion: the obstacle rising from his experience of the works of art of Italian Renaissance and of their opening the internal space of uncertainty. It is maintained that the contemporary significance of Freud’s work lies in the result of that attempt.

KEY WORDS: uncanny, terror, art, new, uncertainty