'We call it "unheimlich"; you call it "heimlich"'

Let me begin my post by pointing out the excellent statement Freud makes in his self-effacing introduction:
But I must confess that I have not made a very thorough examination of the literature, especially the foreign literature, relating to this present modest contribution of mine, for reasons which, as may be guessed, lie in the times in which we live; so that my paper is presented to the reader without any claim to priority. (Freud, 1)
This is an excellent excuse, and one which I will now use with Freud's inspiration. I am completing this blog entry five days late, for reasons which, as may be guessed, lie in the times in which we live. I present this post to you, oh reader, without any claim to having made it a priority. Actually, this excuse is so excellent, because it rhetorically relates the reader to Freud's experience. While Freud's reader may not have read any of the literature, foreign or domestic, on the topic of the uncanny, Freud assumes that his reader will be familiar with how difficult it is to get a hold of such research and be sympathetic toward Freud's rather undiverse body of source material. Freud extends his readers an opportunity to feel critical and educated in their response to his work, and then to be prepared to be enlightened by his brilliance.

Freud's lengthy discussion of the etymology of heimlich and its equivalents in other languages is quite interesting, and serves a much greater purpose than simply to endow the reader with a better understanding of the origins of the word. In fact, Freud purposely muddles our understanding of the word, so that by the end of his exhaustive etymological tirade we have begun to have very unheimlich feelings about the heimlich. Truly, it seems that the word can mean almost anything, and the etymology demonstrates to us how such a seemingly strange topic lives at the border of our reality and how easily that which is familiar, which we think we know, can slip into the uncanny without our understanding.