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Uncanny vs Abnormal - What's the difference?

uncanny | abnormal |

As adjectives the difference between uncanny and abnormal

is that uncanny is strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird while abnormal is not conforming to rule or system; deviating from the usual or normal type .

As a noun abnormal is

a person or object that is not normal.

uncanny

English

(uncanny)

Adjective

(er)
  • strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird
    • He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
  • Careless.
  • (rfc-sense) (psychology, psychoanalysis, Freud) Simultaneously familiar and foreign, often uncomfortably so; translation of Freud's usage of the German "unheimlich" (literally "unsecret").
  • * 2011 , Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies , page 99:
    • [The uncanny is] something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed. The link with repression now illuminates Schelling?s definition of the uncanny as ‘something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open.’ (Freud: 2003, 147 f)
  • * 2003 , Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny , page 1 [http://books.google.com/books?id=XkvSWxjrMN8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
    • The uncanny involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced.
  • * 2011 , Anneleen Masschelein, The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory , page 2 [http://books.google.com/books?id=9XgohiN3vOwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=uncanny%20freud&f=false]:
    • Because the uncanny affects and haunts everything, it is in constant transformation and cannot be pinned down.
  • * 2001 , Diane Jonte-Pace, Speaking the Unspeakable , page 81 [http://books.google.com/books?id=GrtZ4fBOlTIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
    • In the preceding chapter, we saw that Freud linked the maternal body, death, and the afterlife with the uncanny' in his famous essay "The ' Uncanny " ("Das Unheimliche").
  • * 1982 , Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud , page 20 [http://books.google.com/books?id=mRwvpP1SiWEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
    • This uncontrollable possibility—the possibility of a certain loss of control—can, perhaps, explain why the uncanny remains a marginal notion even within psychoanalysis itself.
  • * 2005 , Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic , page vii [http://books.google.com/books?id=3JrY_Pc4CFsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d-iCUrfWB4fu2AWAz4HoBA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=uncanny%20freud&f=false]:
    • Freud argued that the uncanny' was particularly associated with feelings of horror aroused by the figure of the paternal castrator, neglecting the tropes of woman and animal as a source of the ' uncanny .
  • * 1994 , Sonu Shamdasani and Michael Münchow, Speculations after Freud , page 186 [http://books.google.com/books?id=e_P9tt2YF3oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aumCUoSzEITj2QX1roHYBA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBTgo#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
    • As is well known, Freud introduced the concept of the uncanny into psychoanalysis in 1919 and used The Sandman as a prime illustration for his definition.

    Antonyms

    * canny

    Derived terms

    * uncanny valley * uncannily

    abnormal

    English

    Alternative forms

    * anormal * (obsolete) abnormous

    Adjective

    (en adjective)
  • Not conforming to rule or system; deviating from the usual or normal type.
  • * 1899 , (Arthur Conan Doyle), A Duet , ch. 6:
    • And then after an abnormal meal, which was either a very late breakfast or a very early lunch, they drove on to Victoria Station.
  • Of or pertaining to that which is abnormal, in particular, behaviour that deviates from norms of social propriety or accepted standards of mental health.
  • * 1904 , (Jack London), The Sea Wolf , ch. 23:
    • Furuseth was right; I was abnormal , an "emotionless monster," a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring in sensations only of the mind.

    Synonyms

    * aberrant, anomalous, atypical, exceptional, extraordinary, irregular, odd, strange, unusual.

    Noun

    (en noun)
  • A person or object that is not normal.

    • References

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