The Uncanny Workplace

Abstract

The uncanny has played a significant role in psychoanalytic discourse since Freud’s analysis of it in his seminal paper of 1919. Since then, it has been used to aid psychoanalytic interpretation both in the clinic and, increasingly, as a means of analysing literature and film.  However, we argue in this paper that there is also a role for the uncanny in the exploration of working environments and our perception of them. We aim to outline what is understood by “the uncanny” and then apply this to notions of contemporary work. As part of the paper, specific contexts will be described as a way of offering vignettes or scenarios in which notions of the unfamiliar or the anxiety-inducing are interpreted. It will be argued that workers as individuals (or as a group of colleagues) as well as organizations would benefit from being more open to the strange and unsettling at work, especially as the pace of change continues to increase regarding ways of working.