Journal of'~.

ontempomry Psychotherapy

Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 17-22 Winter 197JS

Beloved Monsters :
A Psychodynamic Appraisal of Horror

WILLIAM GOLDSMITH, M.D.

I USTSUPPOSENOW,
, he thought, that there wereMartians living on Mars ana
they saw our ship cominll and saw inside our ship and hated us. Suppose now,
that they wanted to destroy us, as invaders, as unwanted ones, and they wanted to do
it in a very clever way, so that we would be taken off guard. Well what would the best
weapon be that a Martian could use against Earth men with atomic weapons?
The answer wa$ interesting: telepathy, hypnosis, memory, and imagination.
Suppose all o f these houses aren't real at all this bed not real, but on~y figments o f
my own imagination, given substance by telepathy and hypnosis through the Martians, thought Captain John Black. Suppose these houses are really some other shape,
a Martian shape, but, by playing on my desires and wants, these Martians have made
*his seem like my old home town, my old house, to lull me out o f my suspicions. What
better way to fool a man, using his own mother and father as bait?
. . . Suppose those two people in the next room, asleep, are not my mother and
father at all, but two Martians, incredibly brilliant, with the ability to keep me under
this dreaming hypnosis all the time.
. . . . A n d wouldn't it be horrible and terrifying to discover that all of this was part
o f some great clever plan by the Martians to . . . kill us? Sometime during the
night, perhaps, my brother here on this bed will change form, melt, shift and become
another thing, a re_ruble thing, a Martian. It would be very simple for him ju,,,t to turn
over in bed and put a knife in my h e a r t . .
His hands were shaking under the covers. His body was cold. Suddenly it was not a
theory. Suddenly'he was very a f r a i d . . .
Carefully he lifted the covers, rolled them back. He slipped from the bed and was
walking soft~.y across the room when his brother's voice said, "Where are you going?"
"What?"
His brother's voice was quite cold. "I said, where do you think you're going?"

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"For a drink of water."

"But you're not thirsty."
"Yes, yes, I am."
"No, you're not."
Captain John Black broke and ran across the room. He screamed. He screamed
twice.
He never reached the door.
--Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles

The above is a classic rendering of one of childhood's most common fantasies:

My parents are not really my parents. In some readers, it will have stimulated the
emotion known as horror. This paper explores the nature of horror, and examines
some of the common monster types that arouse it.
There is little in recent psychiatric literature specifically about horror. As is so
often the case, Freud has made the most penetrating commentary on the subject. In
1919, in a paper titled "The Uncanny," he explicitly distinguished horror from other
anxiety-associated emotions. He commented that individual sensitivity to this quality
of feeling varies greatly, categorizing it with "that class of the terrifying, which leads
us back to something long known to us, once very familiar." Something horrible is, in
part, something once ours, become alien. It often accompanies doubts whether an
apparently animate thing is really alive and vice versa.
There is a quality of ambivalence in horror. The "Sand Man," a nursery tale
figure who tears out bad children's eyes, was shown by Freud to be a father imago,
evoking both positive and negative feelings. Regression and feelings of helplessness
and unreality are also part of the horror experience. Freud associates uncanny
feelings with a developmental period when the ego is not sharply differentiated from
the external world, when beliefs in omnipotence of thoughts and actions are not yet
undermined by reality testing. An uncanny feeling results in later life when one has an
experience in which mature judgment collides with these overlain but not discarded
beliefs. Freud and other writers have theorized that the horror stimulated by
dismembered limbs is due to castration anxiety. Horror is a part of everyone's
emotional experience, since "the factors of silence, solitude and darkness . . . are
actually elements in the production of that infantile morbid anxiety from which the
majority of human beings have never become quite free." (1)
Newman and Stoller, in discussing spider symbolism, illustrate the projective
nature of horror (2). The fears most children have of snakes and other wild animals,
creatures outside their direct experience but rich material on which to project conflictual material, is well known (3). However, while fears of animals are usually left
behind with latency, fears of monsters are not.
Some emotions are aroused entirely, or almost entirely, by immediate, clearly
defined stimuli. However, some emotions have an historical dimension--the stimulus
is not just what is present but also what !s past. The feelings aroused by an immediate
but somewhat nebulus stimulus (e.g., an analyst) have roots in the unique history of
the person experiencing them. So it seems to be with the horror experience. An adult,
presented with a monster, a stimulus Which he knows has no basis in present reality,
still responds powerfully. The monster has apparently triggered important symbolic
conflictual material quite apart from its immediate "reality."

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Horror, then emerges as an emotion whose immediate temporal components are

anxiety, ambivalence, and a feeling of helplessness. Its historical components appear
to be derived from the collision of early and later perceptions. A quality of unreality
arises from incongruent perceptions of the same stimulus--a "thing" which is
perceived one way now but was perceived differently at an earlier time, which is both
menacing and attractiv e , nourishing and devouring. In other words, that which
arouses horror will be closely associated with the previous life experience and the
current life situation one has had, and is having, with a parent.
Monster stories are found mainly in the genre encompassing science fiction and
fantasy. These art forms are especially popular with adolescents and young adults. A
taste for them is often formed during late latency or adolescence. The science fiction
monster combines the supernatural and animal qualities commonly feared in earlier
life. Adolescence, of course, is a time of intense identity struggles and re-emergence of
themes of infantile omnipotence, the Oedipal struggle, and other repressed conflictual areas. A professor of English who teaches a seminar in science fiction
describes it this way: "Instead of analyzing the style or the characters in a particular
story, we'll get into a discussion about the primacy of aggression in human nature, or
whether or not it's possible for men to love an alien being, or what distinguishes a
man from a~machine." (4) These themes would b e equally appropriate in therapy.
That this type of literature is more popular with adolescents than with adults may be
some measure of the adolescent's greater ability to tolerate anxiety-provoking,
conflictual material.
Interest in science fiction and tantasy fiction can be partially traced to the clear
portrayal, almost at a conscious level, of many unconscious conflicts. The reader may
find it less threatening to feel horror toward a monster tli~tn a parent. It may be easier
to contemplate the annihilation of civilization than of oneself. It is possible to displace
feelings to story material, thereby gaining some relief from internal conflicts. This
may account for the pleasure and fascination of such stories. A work of art probably
gains universal appeal proportional to the extent that it reaches unconscious as well
as,eonscious levels. Isolation, alienation, annihilation, sexual symbolism and the
Oedipal struggle recur in stories by author after author, generation after generation.
The Monsters
A quality shared by almost all fantasy monsters is invulnerability. Ordinary
methods to destroy it are ineffective. It usually requires a deus ex machina, and not
always an artistically satisfying one, to destroy the creature. H. G. Wells' M,rtlans,
, for example, succumb to bacterial infection after wiping out the British'Army. And in
some stories the monster is not destroyed--it preYails. This invulnerable quality
seems to be essential to the horror experience. Invulnerability implies ambivalent
feelings. The monster represents something which is subjected to a wide variation of
emotions. It must not be destroyed while it is hated, lest it be desired again. If it
represents a parent, it must be invulnerable to preserve it~ nurturing qualities and to
insure against the victory of an even more threatening infantile omnipotence. W h a t
infant, for all his rage and envy, really wants to aestroy mother?
A few standard monster types will now be examined with reference to the above
theoretical considerations.

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The Vampire
The vampire myth is.present in cultures all over the world. In a reported case of
auto-vampirism, characterized by drawing of the patient's own blood while
masturbating, dynamics centered around undifferentiated passivity and minimal
masculine development (5).
In analytic terms, the vampire is seen as the symbol of repressed oral sadism.
There is a wish to suck and cannibalize the breast, which is projected to become a
fear of oral attack (6). The quality of ambivalence necessary for the horror experience
can be postulated in developmental terms. When the infant begins developing teeth,
he can now bite, as well as suck. This new ability to attack the parent is prQjected onto
the parent, and a quality of ambivalence around oral needs is present which was not
there before.
ClinicaUy, the vampire seems to be the particular bane of adolescent girls. The
sexual aspect of the monster is clear--he is the creature who does terrible things
during the night by attacking the neck, a prominent erogenous zone. He can only be
killed by a sort of symbolic counter-rape---impalement with a wooden stake---a
means of phallic attack unavailable to a girl,
The vampire must renew his own life by extracting life from others. This condition is analogous to a potential dynamic in the family of an adolescent of either sex.
The conscious or unconscious parental envy of the adolescent's youth and energy may
be perceived by him as a threat to his very existence, an echo of the. infant stage when
he was wholly dependent on a parent on whoni he projected cannibalistic rage..'The
vampire, as do other monsters, provides a vehicle for the expression o~"a constellation
of psychic conflicts.

The Blob
A popular monster theme is the mass of amorphous protoplasm, or giant
amoeba, capable of absorbing all organic matter, and impervious to bullets. It usually
comes from the sea, from outer space, or is the result of a disastrous lab experiment.
A typical description follows, from a 1931 pulp magazine:
" . . . All the east coast of Florida, southern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, in
rapid succession had seen the creeping, irridescent terror. Resistlessly 9ut of the sea it
was heaving, 25 feet high, hundreds of miles long, this vast jelly.like tide of
destruction. It was as if the sea had congealed ancl was making a final triumphant
drive for mastery over the land. With the inevitableness of fate itself the thing rolled
up' enveloping all that opposed it, enfolding the shrieking mobs which tried to flee
before it, and most horrible of all, digesting them." (7)
In this story, themonster is finally destroyed by driving it back into the sea with
concentrated ultra-violet light, then infecting it with cancer. In other stories of this
type, fire is often the saving weapon.
This monster expresses a tear of engulfment, a theme which even has a biblical
antecedent in the story of Jonah and the Whale. The sea, which spawns the monster,

BELOVED MONSTERS

21

has been identified as a symbol of the unconscious, "The great unknown waters, the
source from which we come, the boundless repository of nourishment, forces of
destruction, and various unknown quanta of virtually inexhaustible extent." (5) The
sea has also been considered as symbolic of the great mother. Fear of water,common in
childhood, can be demonstrated in some cases to be associated with pathological ties
to mother. If it is accepted that the "Blob" is symbolic of the overpowering mother,
then the horror experience derives partially from the adolescent or adult position of no
longer wanting that which was ardently desired at an earlier stage--union with
mother. There is a depressive element to this experience: the unconscious perception
of the loss of an earlier state, and even an aversion to it. This may stimulate guilt over
"betrayal" of mother, with accompanying fear of retaliation.
The "Blob," coming from the dark sea, also represents the unconscious. Consciousness, then, is represented by light, the weapon which in many stories destroys
it. As McCully states, " . . the unconscious can thus be viewed as our symbolical
source, the great mother, the feminine principle. Consciousness, its opposite, has
been wrested from the unknown into the known by a constant upward thrust into the
light, the masculine principle, that which seeks ,enlightenment."

The Robot
Pre-adolescent children tend to view father as "stronger, larger, more dangerous,
more dirty, darker, and more angular" than mother (8). The robot is the dangerous,
alienated and alienating father.
Freud discussed the horror evoked by an "automaton," the word "robot" not
having been coined until 1923, in the play "R.U.R." by Karel Capek. In this play, as
in many robot stories, the robots turn on their creators and destroy them. Although
the monster is like a son in the sense that he is created, he is usually bigger, stronger,
and utterly unapproachable on an emotional p l a n e - - a description which fits the
perception many children have of their fathers.
In many robot horror stories, the monster kills his master in an oedipal triangle
situation. Frankenstein's monster attacks on his wedding night, killing his bride. In
another story, considered by its author to be his best of.several hundred, the robot
decapitates his master in order to win, as-he believes, the love of a woman, his
master's girlfriend (9).

The Spider
Spiders haunt the pages of many horror tales. Newman and Stoller have
thoroughly reviewed the spider as a symbol (2). They report a psychotic" hermaphrodite to whom the spider was a horrifying hallucination of mingled male and
female genitalia. The multiple legs were phallic symbols arousing castration dread.
Abraham viewed the spider as symbolic of the phallic, wicked mother. Ambivalence
is part of the cultural view of spiders. In Indian creation myth, a giant spider is said to
have woven the web of the universe. Like the vampire, the spider embodies fear of an
oral sadistic attack by mother. However, in pat!ents with disabling fears of spiders,
Newman and Stoller conclude that such symptom formation serves to strengthen the
boundaries of an otherwise tenuous body image.

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Discussion
There are possible clinical applications of the above data and speculations.
As the favorite fairy tale of childhood has been shown to help delineate fundamental neurotic patterns (10), so may knowledge of a patient's "favorite" monster.
Since not all people are horrified by the same things, horror is probably aroused in
relation to specific repressed conflictual material. A routine psychiatric exam often
includes a query about phobias. Additional questioning about what the patient finds
horrifying may yield valuable clues to underlying dynamics and conflicts, especially
when correlated with material pertaining to past and present parental relationships.
Monster and horror material which comes up during the course of therapy may be
similarly useful.
As with the rest of the rich spectrum of the human condition, the horror experience is both a curtain and a window to the understanding of man.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Freud, S., The uncanny. Collected Papers V. 4, New York, Basic Books, pp 308407.
2. Newman, L. E., and Stoller, R. J., Spider symbolism and bisexuality, J. Amer.
Psychoanal. Assn. 17:862-72, 1969.
3. Maurer, A., What children fear, J. Genet. Psychol. 106:265-277, 1965.
4. Jonas, G., Onward and upward with the arts: S.F., The New Yorker V. XLCIII:
33-52, July 29, 1972.
5. McCuUy, R. S., Vampirism, historical perspective and underlying process in
relation to a case of autovampirism, J. Nerv. Men. Dis. i39: 440-452, 1964.
6. Fenichel, O., The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis: New York, W. W. Norton,
1945.
7. Schachner, N., and Zagat, A., The menace from andromeda, Amazing Stories,
V6: 78-89, April 1931.
8. Kagan, J., Hosken, B., et al., Child's symbolic conceptualRi~ation of parents,
Child Develop. 32: 625-36, 1961.
9. Bloch, R., Almost human, My Best Science Fiction Story, Merlin Press, 1949.
10. Dieckmann, H., The favorite fairy tale of childh0od, J. Anal. Psychol. 16: 18-30,
1971.