psychology – Page 7 – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

Freud’s View of Fear

Sigmund FreudIllustration by FlyBit43 — Sigmund Freud
Illustration by FlyBit43

While many people can write a horror story, those who have a profound understanding of the emotions associated with horror will have a greater chance of writing a truly great horror story. With that in mind, as tonight’s post I offer a comment from Dr. C. George Boeree on Freud’s view of fear, which he termed “anxiety”. This quote is part of a longer articles which can be found at http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/freud.html. I like the quote, because it explains Freud’s concept in a straightforward, simple, clear way that I can grasp easily. I also like the quote because it gives me three different types of fear to instill in my audience vicariously. As I have mentioned in previous posts, when someone reads a story, they are experiencing the events of that story vicariously. As writers of horror, one of the primary emotions we want to instill is fear. In this short comment, Dr. Boeree provides us with three flavors of fear we can instill in our audiences.

“The ego — the “I” — sits at the center of some pretty powerful forces: reality; society, as represented by the superego; biology, as represented by the id. When these make conflicting demands upon the poor ego, it is understandable if it — if you — feel threatened, feel overwhelmed, feel as if it were about to collapse under the weight of it all. This feeling is called anxiety, and it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival, and with it the survival of the whole organism, is in jeopardy.

“Freud mentions three different kind of anxieties: The first is realistic anxiety, which you and I would call fear. Actually Freud did, too, in German. But his translators thought “fear” too mundane! Nevertheless, if I throw you into a pit of poisonous snakes, you might experience realistic anxiety.

“The second is moral anxiety. This is what we feel when the threat comes not from the outer, physical world, but from the internalized social world of the superego. It is, in fact, just another word for feelings like shame and guilt and the fear of punishment.

“The last is neurotic anxiety. This is the fear of being overwhelmed by impulses from the id. If you have ever felt like you were about to “lose it,” lose control, your temper, your rationality, or even your mind, you have felt neurotic anxiety. Neurotic is actually the Latin word for nervous, so this is nervous anxiety. It is this kind of anxiety that intrigued Freud most, and we usually just call it anxiety, plain and simple.”

Undoubtedly, Jung had his own views of fear, with which I am not familiar, and other psychiatrists have theirs, and Freud’s views may well be outdated, or even proven wrong. However, if we are to understand the nature of fear, Freud is a good a place to start as any.

Thoughts? Comments?

Notes on “I am Legend”

Cover of First Edition, 1954(Please note that this cover is protected by copyright; please refer to Wikipedia for details on permissible use) — Cover of First Edition, 1954
(Please note that this cover is protected by copyright; please refer to Wikipedia for details on permissible use)

I have been reading Richard Matheson’s I am Legend recently whenever I have the opportunity. I would not say it is a fascinating book, but it is interesting. One particularly interesting aspect is that the book is not just about one man’s fight against zombies (which he terms “vampires”, but which fit better into the modern concept of zombies) , but that it also deals extensively with his fight against depression and loneliness in a post-apocalyptic future. Today, I happened to look up the work on Wikipedia and found the following interesting review written by Dan Schneider of International Writers Magazine: Book Review n 2005:

“…despite having vampires in it, [the novel] is not a novel on vampires, nor even a horror nor sci-fi novel at all, in the deepest sense. Instead, it is perhaps the greatest novel written on human loneliness. It far surpasses Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe in that regard. Its insights into what it is to be human go far beyond genre, and is all the more surprising because, having read his short stories – which range from competent but simplistic, to having classic Twilight Zone twists (he was a major contributor to the original TV series) there is nothing within those short stories that suggests the supreme majesty of the existential masterpiece I Am Legend was aborning.”

Mr. Schneider may very well be right that it may be the greatest novel written on human loneliness. If it is not, it is very close to the top. I have read Robinson Crusoe and my impression is that I am Legend surpasses that in describing the mental and emotional anguish of loneliness and bringing that inner struggle home to the modern reader.

In my view, one reason I am Legend is important to the horror genre, is because it shows another aspect of horror: personal, inner anguish and turmoil, which probably should be classified as a form of horror, if no one has done so yet. Anyone who has suffered extreme inner turmoil would probably agree that it is worthy of being termed horror. It may even be the most common form of real-life horror. I do not know the statistics for how many people are tortured at the hands of serial killers or executioners or other true-to-life monsters, but I would guess that it is far less than the number of people experiencing extreme negative emotions without actually having been physically tormented.

This aspect of inner horror can add another dimension to the otherwise average horror novel or movie, which, based on what I have seen, tends to emphasize physical violence or the threat of physical violence. In those works, the inner horror of the protagonists is usually assumed, but not examined in detail. Examining the inner emotions of protagonists and antagonists will help form empathy and sympathy for the characters within readers, particularly in those who have experienced a similar emotion, and will help form a tighter emotional connection between work and audience.

I recommend reading the Wikipedia article on I am Legend. It is quite fascinating. However, do not do as I have done and read it before completing the book. You will only spoil the ending for yourself.

Thoughts? Comments?

More on ETA Hoffmann

Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann1776-1822 — Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann
1776-1822

I am up late tonight and thought I would just throw together a few additional tidbits on one of the earliest masters of horror: ETA Hoffman.

Here is an interesting paragraph from The Literary Gothic:

24 January 1776 – 25 June 1822

You know the “Nutcracker” ballet, the one that every local ballet troupe is obligated to perform at Christmas? This isn’t the guy — Tchaikovsky wrote that music in the 1890s, using the translation by Alexander Dumas (pere) rather than Hoffmann’s original. But Hoffmann wrote the short story that lies behind it, and it’s a short story that’s very unlike the charmingly sentimental puffery that little kids get dragged to every December. Very unlike… Hoffmann, a brilliant music critic and respectable composer as well as writer, is one of the major figures of German Romanticism, and a powerful and disturbing writer — and disturbed, according to many; Sir Walter Scott, in his extended discussion of Hoffmann and literary supernaturalism, concludes that Hoffmann needs medical attention more than he needs literary criticism, and no less a student of dysfunctional minds (which I guess is just about everyone’s) than Sigmund Freud made Hoffman’s “The Sandman” the center of his essay on “The Uncanny.” Hoffmann, although strongly influenced by Gothic literature, is probably best regarded as a fantasist rather than a “Gothic” or “horror” writer, although Freud’s term is perhaps the most apt.

This link leads to a rather lengthy article on Hoffmann and German Romanticism at theliterarylink.com. I haven’t read it yet, but to a fan of German literature like myself, it looks fascinating. I hope to find time to read it soon.

Here is a link to the text of “The Sandman“, one’s of Hoffmann’s most famous works. Litgothic.com says about it:

“The classic — and widely anthologized — tale of a boy and his automaton — and, according to Freud, who discusses this work in his essay “The Uncanny,” castration anxiety. Automata, by the way, were a happening phenomenon in the C19 — check out Edgar Allan Poe‘s “Maelzel’s Chess Player” and Hoffmann’s own “Automata” for other Gothic-tradition examples; for a general discussion of automata, check out The Automata Gallery or this History of Automata.”

Here is a link to the goodreads.com article on Hoffmann. And from there here are two interesting quotes from Hoffmann:

“Why should not a writer be permitted to make use of the levers of fear, terror and horror because some feeble soul here and there finds it more than it can bear? Shall there be no strong meat at table because there happen to be some guests there whose stomachs are weak, or who have spoiled their own digestions?” ETA Hoffmann

“There are… otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind.”
― E.T.A. Hoffmann, Die Serapions Brüder: Gesammelte Erzählungen Und Märchen In Vier Bänden

Another link to another lengthy article on Hoffmann, but this one deals with Hoffmann’s treatment of “the uncanny”.

Another interesting summary of Hoffmann’s talent, this one from nndb.com:

“Hoffmann is one of the master novelists of the Romantic movement in Germany. He combined with a humor that reminds us of Jean Paul the warm sympathy for the artist’s standpoint towards life, which was enunciated by early Romantic leaders like Tieck and Wackenroder; but he was superior to all in the almost clairvoyant powers of his imagination. His works abound in grotesque and gruesome scenes — in this respect they mark a descent from the high ideals of the Romantic school; the gruesome was only one outlet for Hoffmann’s genius, and even here the secret of his power lay not in his choice of subjects, but in the wonderfully vivid and realistic presentation of them. Every line he wrote leaves the impression behind it that it expresses something felt or experienced; every scene, vision or character he described seems to have been real and living to him. It is this realism, in the best sense of the word, that made him the great artist he was, and gave him so extraordinary a power over his contemporaries.”

That’s it for tonight. I am off to the land of dreams.

Beyond the Veil of Reality

Face of Horror Houseby Horror House — Face of Horror House
by Horror House

Last night, I watched an adaptation of Lovecraft’s “Dreams in the Witch House” on the Masters of Horror series (season 1, episode 2) on Netflix . Afterwards, being late and time for bed, instead of finding the story on Project Gutenberg or some other cost-free source so that I could read it firsthand, I read a summary of the story on Wikipedia to see if the adaptation was at least reasonably accurate. It seemed to be, even though the story was set in the modern day and the ending varied significantly from the original. But, in accordance with today’s tastes, it was rather bloody and cruel in ways I am sure Lovecraft never intended (I say this after having read a considerable amount of his most famous works).

The most interesting aspect of the story to me was not the story itself, but speculating on how Lovecraft came up with the story’s concept.

I understand from the Wikipedia article that Lovecraft had recently attended a lecture and read up somewhat on non-Euclidean space. Apparently, he was intrigued with the idea of existence on different planes. Somehow he came up with the idea that the different planes of existence might intersect and beings would be able to move from one plane to the next. This is the concept that the protagonist of the story, Walter Gilman (a graduate student in Physics) is studying when he moves into the Witch house, which was a boarding house in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, but three hundred years ago was the residence of a witch. Gilman, as I interpret the TV story, notices that the corner formed by the intersection of two walls and the ceiling in his room coincides with the intersection of three dimensions. It is this intersection that the witch who previously resided in the house and her familiar (a really nasty creature combining a rat with the face of a man) uses to re-enter the house in the modern day and create havoc for Gilman and the other residents. I won’t give away the ending, but it is a good story and probably one of the more reasonably accurate adaptations of a Lovecraft story that you are likely to find.

What I found most interesting was speculating if how Lovecraft came up with the story was to be looking at the intersection of three walls in his house and wonder if different planes of existence could intersect like that and, if they could, could creatures use the intersection to move from one plane to the other? I am always fascinated by how writers come up with ideas for their works. Did you ever wonder what spurred Richard Matheson to write I am Legend or Stephen King to write Carrie?

I know that some authors of Horror (such as Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, and Arthur Machen) were intrigued by the idea of a plane of existence beyond what we take for reality, that what we perceive as reality may actually just mask the true reality. Apparently, Lovecraft was thus intrigued as well and used his ideas of a possible alternative reality as the foundation for what others would later term “the Cthulhu Mythos”.

After having contemplated this since last night, I have been asking myself, what did these intelligent men see in their interpretations of the everyday world that would lead them to believe in the possible existence of an alternative reality? Based upon my experience with humanity, I have come to realize that some people have some downright bizarre concepts of the world around them, but how did these concepts originate? What causes their perceptions to be so radically different from mine? Is it a matter of genetics that causes their synapses to be linked together differently? Do they have slightly different body chemistries influencing their thoughts? Is it that they simply encountered different views of the world as they grew up? Is there a reality that they can perceive but I cannot–in the same way as I can see the workings of God in everything about me, but others do not and thus call themselves atheists and agnostics?

What are your thoughts?

Edward Lucas White

If you have never heard of Edward Lucas White (as I had not until recently), do yourself a favor and look up his short story “Lukundoo” (1925). This is probably one of the best and most terrifying horror stories I have ever read and it is the story for which White is best known. Probably his next best known story is “The House of Nightmare” (1906), though it is not nearly as good as ‘Luknudoo” and by today’s standards of horror would be considered more of a quaint tale told by children around a campfire than true horror. Nonetheless, Lovecraft considered White to be one of the masters of “weird fiction” and mentions him in his treatise “Supernatural Horror in Literature.”

One interesting aspect of White is that he based at least some of his stories on his nightmares, which is not uncommon among horror authors, but after reading “Lukundoo” I had to ask myself, “what was going on in this guy’s psyche?”

Do you base any of your works on dreams or nightmares? Write in and let us know.

David Cronenberg on Art and Horror

David Cronenberg, 2012

Photo by Alan Langford

“I think of horror films as art, as films of confrontation. Films that make you confront aspects of your own life that are difficult to face. Just because you’re making a horror film doesn’t mean you can’t make an artful film.”

–David Cronenberg

I found the quote above at Quotationsbook.com. I have linked David Cronenberg’s name to the Internet Movie Database for those of you not familiar with his works as a director of horror movies (The Fly, Scanners, etc.)

I think the statement is important for two reasons.

First, as I mentioned in my post on Carl Jung and the Creative Subconscious, authors do put something of themselves into their work. Personally, I had never recognized this about my own writing until I had the conversation I described in my post, though I had always known that each work of art is a reflection of the artist in some way. Therefore, up to that point, I cannot say I consciously confronted anything about myself. Since then, though I do not intentionally orient my stories toward self-revelation, I do occasionally recognize some internal bone of contention in a way that could probably best be described as “confrontation”. Writing then becomes a process of self-awareness, of self-knowledge, a type of self-therapy.

More importantly that the author’s own self-therapy, once these works are published, they become a sort of self-awarenes and therapy for the audience who can relate to them. We are all human; we all have the same basic drives and desires. If one individual experiences an internal confrontation, then many others have likely experienced it as well (perhaps this is the mechanism behnd living vicariously). Then the process of confrontation and self-awareness for the author becomes a process of confrontation and self-awareness for his audience as well–whether on a conscious or subconscious level. Then the horror genre becomes a form of self-therapy for society so that society can confront its dark side while experiencing our suppressed primal natures (as I mentioned in an earlier post).

The second important point about this statement is alluded to in the final sentence, that just because one is making a horror film, doesn’t mean one can’t make an artful film. On its surface, this is obviously true. There is no reason anyone cannot make a horror film with the same artistic feeling as David McLean did in Lawrence of Arabia or Stanley Kubrick did in 2001: A Space Odyssey. But beneath this surface lies another point. In the first two sentences, Mr. Cronenberg defines horror films as films of self-confrontation. In the last sentence he equates horror films with artful films. He is equating artful films with being films of self-confrontation. A=B=C. Art equating to self-confrontation could easily be the subject of a thesis, if not of an exceptionally thick textbook. Therefore, in my limited time and space available I will not even begin to delve into it here. Please explore it on your own, however. I think it would be a fascinating venture.

Any thoughts or comments?

Quote for February 7, 2013

Theodor Adorno

by Aleandro Gonzalez de Leon

I found the following quotation from the German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist Theodor Adorno at BrainyQuote.com and thought I might share it. I am often dubious of using a quote from a website, because I have seen a few that are obviously wrongly attributed, but whether or not Adorno actually said this, it is still interesting in its own right. However, if he did say it, which is quite likely, it becomes even more interesting because of his background as a sociologist and philosopher.

“Horror is beyond the reach of psychology.”

I admit I am not familiar with Adorno or his works, but in light of the pyschological bent of my previous posts, I am sure you will understand why I find it interesting. Please let me know your thoughts on the quotation, on Adorno, and on whether this is actually one of his statements.

Carl Jung and the Creative Subconscious

Carl Gustav Jung, 1912

Someone told me recently that the pyschologist Carl Jung believed the work reveals something about the author. We discussed this idea for a few minutes before it hit home in a very scary fashion, because we were discussing my works of horror. I realized that at least sometimes my own subconscious fears may influence, if not determine, the course of my stories. Storylines reflecting the subconscious fears of the author makes a lot of sense, because, to my mind at least, dreams and nightmares also originate in and reflect the undercurrents of the subconscious.

So, what do you think? Is the subconscious wellspring responsible for the creation of dreams the same one responsible for creative works? What does this say about authors like Yann Martel who wrote “Life of Pi”? What does it say about authors like Clive Barker and H.P. Lovecraft and even myself?

While we are at it, here are three quotes from Jung to provide additional food for thought. What do they say about writers of horror? I found them at The Painter’s Keys: Art Quotes from Carl Gustav Jung.

“Often the hands will solve a mystery that the intellect has struggled with in vain.”

“The secret of artistic creation and the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of ‘participation mystique’ – to that level of experience at which it is man who lives, and not the individual…”

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

Balance

Writing horror is a grim pastime. One spends many hours delving into the darkest aspects of the human soul. One’s mind is filled with murder, torture, violence, hatred, as well as characters, places, and situations that belong in the deepest pits of Dante’s Inferno. Granted, out of these depths often arise heroes who triumph over the evil surrounding them and thus bring out the highest and noblest aspects of the human spirit, which may provide psychological comfort and spiritual salvation to the author, but journeying into darkness periodically will take its toll on anyone to some degree. I have to ask myself how many authors of horror fall victim to depression and other maladies of the spirit.

But now, let us take this scenario and turn it about into something positive, something uplifting. Let me pose this question to you, my readership, in hopes that the answers I receive will benefit not only myself, but everyone else who reads them: how do you, writers of horror, find relief from the psychological toll encountered during your sojourns into darkness? How do you balance out your lives so that you continue to see the beauty of the world around you and do no not stay imprisoned in the worlds of evil you create? Do you watch comedies at the movies? Do you take long walks along a tranquil coast? Do you cuddle with your children and pets? Do you collect the artworks of Thomas Kinkade or someone else who paints idyllic scenes of light and earthly paradise? Please let me and my readers know so that we can find new avenues out of our horror-filled ruts and blood-stained dungeons.