ANXIETY OF THE UNCANNY: AN ENCOUNTER WITH THE UNMOVING

Abstract

The article is devoted to a psychoanalytic exploration of anxiety that acquires an uncanny dimension in situations of massive traumatization, particularly in the context of full-scale war. The starting assumption of the study is that a distinctive feature of contemporary traumatic experience is the encounter with the unresponsive – understood as a specific form of the non-living or not-quiteliving – which evokes a disturbing sense of disrupted boundaries between the living and the dead, the human and the non-human. The paper examines the classical psychoanalytic understanding of the uncanny as formulated by S. Freud and further develops this concept through later theoretical perspectives. Special attention is given to W. Bion’s notion of minus-links and his distinction between three-dimensional and dimensionless space as metaphors for different modes of psychic processing. It is argued that contact with an unresponsive object prevents the formation of containing relationships and leads to fragmentation, de-symbolization, and the accumulation of unprocessed traumatic elements. An additional theoretical framework is provided by A. Green’s concept of the “dead mother,” which allows for an understanding of the experience of sudden object disinvestment and the formation of a “cold core” as a consequence of encountering emptiness where living presence once existed. A cautious phenomenological parallel is drawn between early experiences of relating to an unresponsive object and the collective experience of dehumanized violence. The conclusions emphasize that the encounter with the unresponsive constitutes a crucial component of psychic trauma, one that threatens the capacities for symbolization, empathy, and reparation. Psychoanalysis is presented as a framework for understanding this experience and as a potential resource for preserving humaneness under conditions of extreme social adversity.