The present article studies Shklovsky’s idea of emotional and cognitive renewal of the habitual – ostranenie – alongside cognate concepts in psychology and cognitive studies. It redefines ostranenie not as a device (as commonly accepted in literary studies), but as a cognitive/psychological effect, and suggests the term “extratextual ostranenie” to refer to the feeling one has when the usual becomes seemingly strange – and at the same time more rather than less emotionally relevant. As for literary ostranenie, even when it is created though characters who feel alienated or depersonalized, the readers’ experience is exactly the opposite experience – emotional reconnection to the world.