Horror movies and the social unconscious

The dark road to the social unconscious

Horror movies have been around since the advent of film technology in the late 1800s (Skal, 2001). Traditionally they have been analysed and understood through various theories, like psychoanalytic theory, feminist theory, and genre theory (Tudor, 1989). The different approaches have tried to uncover how underlying themes and messages are conveyed in the movies and how they shape and reflect our understanding of the world around us. In this article I will propose a less objectifying approach. Instead of viewing the horror movie as art, text or an object of vision, I will argue that they are an organic expression of our social unconscious. The horror movies are the dark mirrors continuously reflecting what we collectively repress and split off. They are the dreams that afford us a glimpse into our social unconscious.

Dreams and the social unconscious

The idea of the social unconscious has been explored by several influential thinkers like C.G Jung (1969), E. Fromm (1994), P. Bourdieu (1977) and A. Giddens (1991). The concept suggests that our individual psychology is deeply intertwined with our collective experiences as members of a society. According to group analytic theory humans are primarily social beings. We exist as part of a group (Foulkes and Anthony, 1984: 234). In the group we are tightly knitted together in a so-called matrix; ‘Its lines of force may be conceived as passing right through the individual member and may therefore be called a transpersonal network, comparable to a magnetic field’ (Foulkes and Anthony, 1984: 258). From this perspective humans are connected to the group as single neurons are connected to the nervous system. They are just part of a network that reacts and responds as a whole (Karterud, 1999: 60). It follows from this line of thinking that any single participant in a group can be the voice of this transpersonal network (Goldstein in Karterud, 1999: 60). Dreams are such expressions. When shared in group therapy they are important communications about the group process (Noack, 2010: 678). ‘Every shared dream is a portrayal of the group and valid perspective on the current group dynamic and self-state’ (Karterud, 1999: 43, my translation). By sharing such dreams, the participants enable the group’s discussion and integration of repressed topics:

The dreamer’s function in group therapy is often to tell the appropriate dream that may help a group’s hitherto disowned content (e.g. some kind of latent sexual or aggressive feeling) be contained, elaborated and subsequently better integrated. (Friedman in Neri et al., 2002: 57)

Throughout human history dreams have been important to society (Noack, 2010: 673) and often ‘a voice of fate and destiny’ (Shalit, 2020: 17). Even today dreams play a central role in many sociocultural systems (Schlachet in Neri et al., 2002: 80).

The Jewish claim for territorial statehood in Judea and Samaria is based on Jacob’s ladder dream at Bethel (Genesis, 28.12) and the territorial mandate of the Serbian war in Kosovo was at least partly legitimized by Prince Lazarros dream in 1398 AD (Edgar, 2021). Freud famously called the dream the royal road to the unconscious (Gabbard, 2017: 141) and Jung regarded dreams as essential for psychological growth (Jung, 1964). Dreams are existential messages to us, and they succinctly convey what we lack in life according to Fritz Perls, the founder of Gestalt therapy (Perls, 1969: 76). They are deemed so important that Bion argued that they essentially are sine qua non for the process of thinking (Grotstein in Neri et al., 2002: 116).

Dreams and movies

Although most people are unaware of it, dreams are continuously shared with ‘the group’ all over the world. The publishing of the book Hollywood: The Dream Factory (Powdermaker, 1950) ‘needed no subtitles, for everyone understood the connection between film and dream. (. . .) the concept of film as a dream factory has lived on independently and has penetrated our everyday vocabulary’ (Packer, 2002: 44). Another contemporary example of the interrelation between dreams and movies is evident in Stephen Spielberg’s company called DreamWorks (DreamWorks Animation LLC). Several popular horror movies are in fact based on dreams. Mary Shelley dreamt of Frankenstein before she wrote her novel (Shelley, 2017: xvi). Robert Louis Stevenson’s The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was inspired by a nightmare (Wikipedia contributors, 2022). Salem’s lot (Monash, 1979) is one of many novels that Stephen King has based on his dreams (Nastasi, 2013; Roberts, 2022). Stephanie Meyer got her idea for The Twilight Saga through a dream (Meyer, 2020) and Anne Rice wrote An interview with a vampire (Jordan, 1994) after having a nightmare (Nastasi, 2013). In the words of James Cameron:

I have never had nightmares about Terminators after I made the film. I had nightmares that inspired the film. But I always feel that making the film is the catharsis that stops the nightmares, if you will. For example, I used to always have nightmares about giant waves, tsunamis essentially. And when I made The Abyss (1989), which had a giant wave scene in it, those stopped. (Jocelyn, 2016)

The close connection, or isomorphism, between movies and dreams is furthermore evident in the actual phenomenology of these experiences. The identification with the projected image, the physiological and emotional arousal and the changes in consciousness we experience while watching a movie, share many characteristics with that of dreaming (Hockley, 2007: 69). Furthermore, both movies and dreams involve a suspension of disbelief (Sobchack, 1992). ‘In the way they work upon us, films are much like dreams, and horror films are like nightmares’ (Derry, 2009: 21). These isomorphic features seen together with the group analytic perspective on dreams, makes it possible to understand the horror movies director/ screen writer as the voice of the group, sharing ‘the appropriate dream’ with society.

National trauma and horror movies

When people are recovering successfully from a traumatic experience, the most typical evolution of dreams is that they begin with frequent recreations of the trauma, but then fewer of these dreams occur or they are milder versions . . . (Barret and Sturzenacker, 2018: 2)

It takes time to heal from trauma (Kalsched,1996: 23). According to Noack it might take generations to make sense of the unspeakable ‘un-thought known’ (2010: 683). The raw confrontations with reality must be digested, before we manage to think about them. The symbolization through dreams is essential to this process:

The dream function serves to intercept the absolute realness . . . and transforming it into myth (dream and/ or unconscious phantasy) for further mental elaborations and processing (i.e. dream interpretation). (Bion quoted in Neri et al., 2008: 120)

On a collective level we can monitor its progress in the way movies portray the trauma.

Many movies address personal, national and even global trauma. Horror movies distinguish themselves from other genres in the way they elicit fear and terror and rely on graphic violence, gore, or disturbing imagery that shock and horrify the audience. They often feature supernatural and otherworldly elements in contrast to movies that take a more realistic and grounded approach to the same subject matter.

The logic of the current article is based on the analogy between dreams and movies. In this line of thinking one would expect that national or global trauma initially would be revisited as horror movies (nightmares) and then only later available for reflection in other movie genres, like drama. In the same manner as nightmares are the common companion of trauma and over time or through psychotherapy become less intrusive and the experience more integrated. The violence, gore and shocking imagery in nightmares should be understood as a proportional expression of the indigestible experience. The many excesses in horror movies might seem exploitative but can similarly be understood as a symbolic expression of the underlying traumatic experience on a group level.

The process of ‘vergangenheitsbewältigung’ (coming to terms with the past) has been a long and ongoing one in Germany since the Second World War (Lepping and Pole, 2022). The challenges could be illustrated by the horror movie Nekromantik (Buttgereit, 1988) that premiered in 1988. Blake (2012: 123) interprets the graphic scenes of necrophilia and mutilation in this movie as a metaphor for the trauma and shame Germany experienced in the aftermath of the Second World War. The necrophilia alone could quite literally symbolize the difficulty of letting go of the past. In contrast, a drama film like Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013) investigates the atrocities of the Second World War and Poland’s troubled past with a quiet, contemplative approach. This might speak to a more digested experience where graphic and horrifying imagery is no longer needed to express the full complexity of the experience.

Psychologically trauma disrupts one’s sense of safety and security and can lead to the reemergence of primitive defence mechanisms, such as splitting, projection and projective identification (Gabbard, 2005: 59). In other words, trauma can force us back to a paranoid-schizoid position as described by Melanie Klein (Mitchell and Black, 1995: 85). In her theory the infant’s initial step towards psychological maturation is to divide the world into good and bad parts. Throughout life we split off and repress what we cannot accept or tolerate in ourselves. These parts are projected and become pursuing i.e. we see them in others and in the world around us. The paranoid-schizoid position is illustrated in the story of Frankenstein where one can interpret Victor’s split off parts as the pursuing monster. Through maturation, experience or psychotherapy we can integrate these disowned parts and increase our capacity to contain rejected aspects of our self. Our perception of the world will then become more realistic and ambivalent: ‘The justice of understanding must await the mercy of the depressive position’ (Grotstein, 1997: 58). In life we continuously move between these positions. This same vacillation occurs at group level (Carveth, 2021) and consequently a whole nation can regress into a paranoid-schizoid state due to trauma.

The paranoid-schizoid position is vividly portrayed in nightmares and horror movies. Here we encounter the split off parts of ourselves and of society in symbolic and monstrous form. By examining our individual nightmares, we might understand what our conscious mind finds undigestible i.e. what we repress and are unable to integrate. By analogy we can study a society’s horror movies and uncover what the culture represses. The renowned horror movie critic Robin Wood describes this in his article The American Nightmare:

One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses, its reemergence dramatized, as in our nightmares, as an object of horror, a matter for terror, and the happy ending (when it exists) typically signifying the restoration of repression. (Wood in Jancovich, 2002: 28)

Although many movies within different genres are made following national traumas like 9/11 or the Second World War, it is tempting to claim that the horror movies convey the most immediate and complex emotional experiences of the trauma. As we shall see the horror movies in the aftermath of 9/11 often present confusion, terror and nihilism, while a docudrama thriller like United 93 (Greengrass, 2006) portray the bravery and heroism of the passengers on one of the hijacked planes during the 9/11 attack. The latter might be a socially desired narrative and an attempt to re-establish some sense of dignity and hope. But it is probably less fit to portray the turmoil in the social unconscious following the attack.

The therapeutic function of horror movies

By viewing dreams and movies as isomorphic, one can gain access to the rich symbolic world of the social unconscious. In this perspective horror movies portray society’s unconscious struggles and by paying attention to their content we can gain a deeper understanding of what we repress and what we need to integrate to achieve a more balanced social consciousness.

In her book The Wounds of Nations (2012) Linnie Blake attempts to show how horror movies can be therapeutic and help us to heal from collective trauma. She describes how horror movies reopen national wounds that have been repressed, overlooked or only superficially touched upon in society.

. . . critical engagement with a nation’s horror cinema offers a significant means of not only grappling with the traumatic past and in so doing measuring the effects of social, political and cultural transformation of the nation on its citizens, but of exposing the layers of obfuscation, denial or revisionism with which those wounds are dressed in service of the dominant ideologies of national identity. (Blake, 2012: 23)

The horror genre helps a culture therapeutically, by challenging one-dimensional ideas about nationality and identity and inviting a more nuanced and inclusive understanding. This is analogous to Jung’s understanding of dreams as compensatory to our conscious beliefs i.e. the dream counterbalance flaws in our conscious perception of the world. ‘The general function of dreams is to balance such disturbances in the mental equilibrium by producing contents of a complementary or compensatory kind’ (Jung, 1989: 470).

Both Jung and Blake perceive the work with this material as crucial for individual and national development respectively. The aim is a more balanced and realistic worldview where the repressed is made conscious and integrated. Hence, by applying our knowledge of dream interpretation to the imagery presented in horror movies we can contribute to the psychological digestion of trauma (cf. Bion). Although there are many different types of horror movies and they do not all address national trauma, they still seem to share one paradoxical function: The exposure to reality through supernatural forces or unreal horrors.

Horror movies post 9/11

In his book Post 9/11 Horror in American Cinema (2012) Kevin J. Wetmore describes how horror movies attempt to contain, investigate and create meaning of the 9/11 terrorist attack. According to the author there was a paradigm shift in the horror movies in the aftermath of 9/11, which reflects this national trauma. Pre-9/11, most horror movies had some kind of moral universe. In the slasher movies of the 1980s and 1990s those who transgressed the conventional codes of society, by having sex, doing drugs etc., were killed. But in the movies post 9/11 the torture and killings happen randomly. The characters deaths are not enough. They must be desperate, without hope and preferably witnessing the horrible deaths of their family and loved ones (cf. The Mist (Darabont, 2007), Drag me to hell (Raimi, 2009) and Paranormal Activity (Peli, 2007)). In Wetmore’s view this nihilism reflects the impact of the terrorist attacks on the American psyche (Wetmore, 2012: 20).

As previously mentioned, Blake argues that society works through trauma by retelling the trauma in symbolic form. This is in line with what Bion called the alpha function of the dream. Traumatic encounters with reality are digested by symbolization in our dreams. This makes these experiences available for thinking. According to Bion the actual symbolization process works by metonyms, synecdoche, metaphors and metathesis (for instance condensation and displacement) etc. (Grotstein, 2000: 27). One can interpret the passenger flight that crashes into a house in War of the Worlds (Spielberg, 2005) as a synecdoche i.e. a part that signifies the whole 9/11 trauma; similarly with the cameramen and women running for their lives in Cloverfield (Reeves, 2008) and War of the worlds (Spielberg, 2005).

One of the most gruesome moments captured from the terrorist attacks are the men and women falling from the skyscrapers. This phenomenon was dubbed ‘The falling man’ and figures in several horror movies: 1408 (Håfström, 2007), Pulse (Sonzero, 2006), Quarantine (Dowdle, 2008), The Descent (Marshall, 2005), The Ruins (Smith, 2008) and in The Happening (Shyamalan, 2008). In Skyline (Strause, 2010) people are falling upwards (Wetmore, 2012: 38). One can even interpret a reference to this in the movie The Wrong Turn (Schmidt, 2003), where one of the characters hide in a burning tower and exclaims ‘I’d rather burn to death’ (Blake, 2012: 143).

Horror movies challenge and revise society’s established narrative. The 9/11 terrorist attacks were not followed by a nuanced or ‘depressive’ discussion about the underlying cause behind the horrible events. The narrative presented by President Bush was a classical paranoid-schizoid scenario; a fight between good and evil, civilization and barbarism (Bush, 2001). One can interpret the consecutive wave of hillbilly horror movies in the aftermath of 9/11, such as Cabin Fever (Roth, 2002), Wrong Turn (Schmidt, 2003), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Nispel, 2003), The Hills have Eyes (Aja, 2006) etc. as reactions to this premature and one-sided world view.

Hillbilly horror . . . can thus be seen as part of a ‘process of acting out, working over, and to some extent working through’ recent events, ‘giving voice to the past’ and comprehending an unsettling and disorienting present. (Blake, 2012: 130)

In these movies there is a striking absence of Islamic monsters. Instead, they portray how local Americans and American families commit the bestial acts. Analogous to the monsters we encounter in our own dreams, one could say that these movies counterbalance the official narrative by bringing the monsters home.

Norwegian horror in the wake of the terrorist attack on Utøya

On 22 July, 2011, Norway was struck by a terrorist attack. The terrorist, a native Norwegian man, set off a bomb outside the department of Foreign Affairs in Oslo. He then went on to kill 69 people attending a youth camp hosted by the Norwegian Labour Party on an island (Utøya), 25 miles outside the capital:

Armed with an automatic rifle and a pistol, the gunman spent the next hour methodically targeting the roughly 600 young people at the camp. Many of the campers were teenagers—one survivor was just 10 years old—and the gunman used his police disguise to lure some of his victims closer with the promise of rescue. (Ray, 2022)

The terrorist was captured and sentenced to 21 years in prison. Although the nation was in shock, the official Norwegian society was quick to focus on supporting the victims and proceeding with a firm and composed trial of the terrorist. All over the country people gathered in peaceful marches with roses in sympathy with the victims and their families, in protests against the terrorist act (Wikipedia-brukere, 2003).

In 2003 the Norwegian horror movie Villmark ¹ (Øie, 2003) premiered, seven years before the attack. Members of a production team are brought out to a remote cabin by their boss. The company plan to film a reality television series, where the contestants are to survive without aid in the wilderness. Their boss wants the team to experience the concept firsthand. An abandoned green tent by a mountain lake is a central part of the story together with a German fighter plane that crashed in the same lake during the Second World War. The main characters are staying in an old cabin and are told to stay away from the lake, which of course, they do not. Their exploration of the tent sets off the horror.

This movie is especially interesting compared to the sequel Villmark 2 ² (Øie, 2015), released four years after the terrorist attack on Utøya. Norwegian society was still reeling from the tragedy and the following trial, where there were great controversies about the terrorist’s mental state. The plot in Villmark 2 evolves inside an abandoned mental asylum. The tent is still a major part of the story, but this time it is red and located on what seems to be a heart shaped island in the mountain lake. The water in the lake is anoxic (dead) and the red tent later appears inside the asylum. The story unfolds as we join a team that is sent to sanitize the asylum and document its condition before it is to be demolished. As they search through the labyrinths of corridors and abandoned offices they uncover the building’s horrible history, its bizarre inhabitants and sacrificed humans and dead animals. They discover that during the Second World War humans were used as guinea pigs for medical experiments in the facility and some of the victims still live there. Simultaneously, as the shocking truth is uncovered, the building is flooded with the dead water. Panic ensues, and the team members are killed one by one.

Villmark (2003) and Villmark 2 (2015) both explore the consequences of concealing versus revealing the traumas of the past. The red tent on the heart shaped island in the anoxic lake can easily be interpreted as a synecdoche i.e. the part that represents the whole trauma of the 22 July terrorist attack. The tent and the island can be understood as symbols of the Labour party’s youth camp, where they in fact camped in tents on an island. The shift in the tent colour from green to red is particularly significant as the red color is the closely associated with the Labour Party. The crashed German fighter plane figures in the second movie as well—and could be interpreted as a metathesis i.e. as a displacement of the terrorist attack onto the more digestible trauma of the Second World War ³ . The asylum itself could be seen as a synecdoche for the national trauma or even the traumatized national psyche, and the sanitation team an almost poetic metaphor for the defence mechanisms and repression in society.

During their search through the building complex, the team discovers an unmapped cellar in the building. This is the children’s ward. If one interprets the building’s floors as levels of consciousness, the cellar is a symbol of the unconscious^4,5. This is emphasized further by the fact that the cellar is submerged in water. The water is as previously mentioned anoxic. We have then the constellation of death, repression (unconscious) and children in one metaphor. A powerful motif considering the terrorist attack on Utøya where 33 children were killed (Stang et al., 2021).

One of the characters in the movie is a representative for The Directorate for Cultural Heritage. She is assigned to save documents and items of historic value in the building. Not surprisingly this witness of truth is killed. First she is caught inside the red tent and dragged into the water but survives. Then she is tied to a wheelchair and drowned by a ‘nurse’ at the end of the movie. The sequence invites many interpretations. It could be seen as another depiction of the powerful repressive force echoed in the overall intention to demolish the asylum.

The story’s suspensive climax occurs in the dark cellar of the asylum. The killer has the upper hand because he can see in the dark. This trait gives an ominous aura to the character and his possible association to the terrorist. The terrorist claimed that he acted out of necessity to prevent the Islamification of the country under the ruling centre-left Labour Party (Smith-Spark, 2021), implying that he was one of few who saw the truth of a coming danger i.e. he could see where others were blind.

The movie’s killer misleads the sanitization team by dressing in the same protective suit as them, while the terrorist deceived his victims by dressing like a police officer. When unmasked we discover that the movie’s killer is monstrous; facially deformed and freakish. To cast the killer as a freak speaks to societies general xenophobia and our wish to distance ourselves from bestial acts committed by other human beings. By alienating and disowning we continue our existence in the paranoid-schizoid position where we split off the unacceptable, project it and become haunted. In the wake of the terrorist attack the idea of a foreign perpetrator spread fast and Muslims were chased through the streets in Oslo (Murtnes, 2011). Later there was a massive interest in his mental status and questions about his sanity. The wish to make the terrorist into a monster was tangible. But in contrast to the movie the Norwegian terrorist was convicted as sane in the end (Lewis and Lyall, 2012). His appearance was the incarnation of ‘the uncanny’ ⁷ : he was a shockingly regular Norwegian man with a difficult childhood or as the writer Åsne Seierstad succinctly named the book about him One of us (2015).

The movie can be viewed metaphorically as a representation of the purging of the Norwegian society in the aftermath of the attack, where strong forces sought to keep a rational distance to the tragedy and investigate, clean up and move on i.e. when the terrorist is convicted and declared a freak, we can all go back to our everyday life. In line with Freud’s view that dreams are wish fulfillments (Mitchell and Black, 1995: 8), the movie grants both the wish to kill the terrorist and make him into ‘the other/ not me’. The composed trial and nonviolent protests with roses in the aftermath of the attack stood in stark contrast to the gruesome acts of aggression. Maybe the movie gestalts the actual outrage in the Norwegian society when the killer is mercilessly executed by the last survivor.

Conclusion

Culture reflects society and our social or collective unconscious permeate culture. Freud saw the individual and society as analogous. Both struggling with the same internal dynamics (Galatariotou, 2005: 18). The extrapolation from dream to movie might challenge our academic rationality, but it is a truism as reflected in common speech. To apply dream interpretation to movies is a tenable extension of an already established way of thinking. Dreams can be viewed as vital for the individual’s psychological development and dreams communicated to the group are equally important on a collective level. Although dream interpretation is a treacherous endeavour, I propose that horror movies can be understood as society’s shared nightmares. They can be interpreted as important symbolizations of undigestible conflicts and taboos in society and may even have a therapeutic function.