Psychological Horror Research Articles

TABOO WORDS IN STEPHEN KING’S NOVEL THE SHINING

This study investigates the use of taboo words by characters in Stephen King’s novel The Shining through a sociolinguistic approach, focusing on their types and functions. The novel follows Jack Torrance, his wife Wendy, and their son Danny, whose stay at the Overlook Hotel leads Jack into a spiral of psychological instability and violence. This research categorizes and quantifies the types and functions of taboo words, applying a descriptive qualitative method complemented by quantitative analysis. The primary data source was the novel itself, with the researcher as the primary instrument and a data sheet as a secondary tool. Results indicate four types of taboo words: epithets, profanity, obscenities, and vulgarities, totaling 300 instances. Profanity appears most frequently (123 instances, 41%), with obscenities following at 79 instances (26.33%). Epithets account for 63 instances (21%), while vulgarities occur least often at 35 instances (11.67%). Further, analysis of the functions of taboo words reveals that characters use them in auxiliary (126 instances, 42%), expletive (101 instances, 33.67%), abusive (63 instances, 21%), and humorous (10 instances, 3.33%) capacities. The dominance of the auxiliary function suggests that characters frequently incorporate taboo language into regular speech patterns rather than using it for direct insult. The minimal presence of the humorous function aligns with the novel's intense psychological horror and supernatural atmosphere, which limits comedic expression.

"I Found it Cathartic": Exploring Empathy and Mental Health Awareness in Psychological Horror Video Games

Horror video games have often been criticized for their negative and unrealistic depiction of mental health, primarily through their portrayal of characters with mental illnesses. Such representations can perpetuate stigma and misconceptions about mental health issues. However, there has recently been a growing interest in accurate portrayals of these characters and how playing these video games could also elicit empathy and mental health awareness. In our study, we explored how a psychological horror game such as Silent Hill 2 could foster empathy and mental health awareness through individual interviews with 11 participants. Our findings revealed that participants gained a deeper understanding of mental health issues and empathy towards characters struggling with mental illnesses by interacting and controlling them. Participants had a greater attachment to the characters' inner struggles and their gameplay was experienced as cathartic. Moreover, our findings highlighted the potential of psychological horror to serve as a platform for character-driven narratives, showcasing how engagement with such games elicited empathy among participants. We contribute to an exploratory understanding that can assist game designers and writers in crafting narratives within the Psychological Horror genre that foster empathy and mental health awareness.

Everything and Nothing

Kathe Koja’s strange horror novel The Cipher (1991) is a peculiar genre fiction that immediately attracts the attention of both horror connoisseurs and philosophers alike. It is at once a visceral, psychological horror and a theoretically intriguing dilemma. It follows the fascinating and horrific events that transpire after a disc of pure nothingness opens up in the protagonist’s home, consuming the lives of the characters just as it does the plot. This non-object pushes readers to discern its peculiar ontology but yields, as one would expect, nothing. This essay reads The Cipher through Martin Heidegger’s equally unorthodox version of the nothing (das Nichts), demonstrating how Heideggerian metaphysical thought can help to illuminate the novel’s strange nothingness, and how Koja’s novel can help us to see the horror inherent in Heidegger’s philosophy. It suggests that horror may be found not in the nihilistic lack of meaning but in our “imprisonment” in meaning.

Consumption of Psychological Horror is Associated With Reduced Stigmatization of Mental Illness

Abstract: Pervasive reactions toward mental illness include dehumanization and stigma. Given the portrayal of such disorders as threatening in psychological horror films, consumption of this subgenre of horror could be associated with pronounced stigmatization of mental illness through dehumanization. We report results of an online survey of U.S. undergraduates ( N = 202) who indicated how frequently they consumed various subgenres of horror films, in addition to their tendencies to dehumanize and stigmatize those experiencing mental illnesses. Only psychological horror consumption was associated with these ascriptions. However, and contrary to predictions, greater psychological horror consumption was associated with less stigmatization and dehumanization of mental illness. We provided updated empirical findings and theoretical conceptualizations to provide context for these unexpected findings and discuss the broader potential benefits of the horror genre in reducing stigmatization.

A Psychoanalytic Analysis of Obsession for Perfection and Psychological Unravelling in Black Swan (2010)

Black Swan (2010) is a psychological horror movie that explores themes of ambition, perfectionism, and the psychological toll of obsession in the competitive world of professional ballet. The movie delves into Nina's descent into madness as she strives for artistic perfection, blurring the lines between reality and hallucination. The aim achieved in this analysis includes examining how psychological stress manifests itself, how high-pressure artistic circumstances can distort reality, and how these factors influence the protagonist's spiral toward mental instability. This is qualitative-descriptive research. The researchers follow a four-step process involving data identification, classification, analysis, and concluding. The main data collection comes from Black Swan (2010), focusing on scenes when Nina Sayers experiences mental breakdowns. The researchers collected data from the film itself and several journals, focusing on Nina's mental disorders and applying Freudian concepts to analyze her behavior and personality. The research results show that obsession and strong demands for perfection from herself and others have disturbed Nina's mental instability in Black Swan (2010).

Neo-liberal Transgressions in the Contemporary Film Industry: Classical Music and Dehumanised Musical Bodies in the Films The Perfection (2018) and Nocturne (2020)

The aim of this paper is to examine what I call “dehumanised musical bodies” in the psychological horror films The Perfection and Nocturne. These multi-deficient neo-liberal bodies are exposed to the stereotypical, strikingly negative image of the sophisticated world of art. Particular attention is paid to the provocative treatment of classical music, focusing on the non-normative institutional practices and ethical reconfiguration of their representatives. A strikingly raw form of musical dehumanisation is found in the film The Perfection, whose soundtrack combines ambient sounds of terror and popular tunes with great classical works by Handel, Mozart and Casadesus. The film Nocturne, on the other hand, offers a more contemplative audio-visual aesthetic with a deceptive hierarchisation of the classical music repertoire. Mozart’s music is frivolously devalued, while Saint-Saëns’ “Piano Concerto No. 2 in G Minor” is used as a narrative device for a destructive manifestation of power that leads to an avalanche of conflict between the sisters. Such explicit play with the classical music signifiers drastically deviates from conventional musical protocols and leads to alienation and, ultimately, transgressive neo-liberal dehumanisation of contemporary musicians.

THE PORTRAYAL OF THE FEMALE PROTAGONIST IN DARREN ARONOFSKY’S BLACK SWAN USING FREUD’S PSYCHOANALYTIC THEORY OF PERSONALITY AND DEFENSE MECHANISMS

Black Swan is a psychological horror movie by Darren Aronofsky. This movie tells of a ballerina named Nina Sayers, who desires to be a perfect ballerina. On her way to achieving her desire, Nina experiences psychological problems where she often hallucinates and even hurts herself. It results from Nina’s anxiety that causes her to be afraid that her desire will not be fulfilled. This article aims to examine Nina’s psychological state during the process of achieving her dreams. To reveal the psychological issues experienced by Nina, a characteristic analysis was carried out using Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis, the theory of human defense mechanisms, and the cinematographic aspects of this film. The results showed that uncontrolled desires could cause psychological disorders that influence a person’s characteristics.

“You’ve Been Living Here For as Long as You Can Remember”: Trauma in OMORI's Environmental Design

Developed by Omocat and released in December 2020, OMORI is a surreal psychological horror role-playing game. The game follows the titular protagonist Omori as it examines such sensitive topics as suicide, grief, death, and depression. Such traumatic events are triggered in several planes of existence—White Space, Headspace, and Black Space—leading to anxiety, regression, and resurfacing trauma. In our article, we examine such representations of trauma with particular attention to the role of environmental design. The planes represent different approaches to memory, trauma, and repression, which Omori and the player navigate in non-linear, recursive paths. We analyze how each space seeks to illuminate and explore aspects of trauma in its respective atmosphere. Through environmental design, OMORI provides players with three distinct experiences with escapism and trauma that are representative of the experiences of trauma victims, ultimately elucidating the psychological phenomenon on a larger scale to de-stigmatize trauma.

"The Ambiguous Horror of Modern Life": An Interview with Paul Tremblay

"The Ambiguous Horror of Modern Life":An Interview with Paul Tremblay Christina Connor (bio) and Paul Tremblay (bio) Paul Tremblay is the author of The Cabin at the End of the World (2018), the award-winning novel and source material for M. Night Shyamalan's film Knock at the Cabin (2023). I'll admit that Cabin first caught my attention as it was popping up on "Best of??" lists in 2018, but it wasn't until Tremblay's 2020 rabies-zombie pandemic novel, Survivor Song, was released during the height of COVID that I found myself cracking open one of his books. Since then, I have read my way through Tremblay's body of work and have been impressed with his brand of psychological horror and the sheer inventiveness of his textual formatting. And I'm not the only one: Stephen King raves that Tremblay's short story collection, Growing Things and Other Stories (2019), is "[o]ne of the best collections of the 21st century."1 Tremblay has his finger on the pulse of modern horror, and this is visible in his inclusion of conspiracy theories, pandemics, stalkers, and the unknowable just beyond our periphery. "Mr. Ambiguous Horror," as he jokingly refers to himself in the metafictional story "Notes from the Dog Walkers" (2019, collected in Growing Things), graciously consented to an interview. We discussed the horror of ambiguity but also the dangers of information overload in our era of social media, misinformation, and reality TV. A writer known for using interesting and unusual narrative approaches, Tremblay spells out the rules he uses to craft his stories and explains how he gauges the effectiveness of these structures. Of course, we also discussed what it's like for a writer to have his book adapted into film, what it really means to give someone else ownership of your story, and what are the chances of it happening for the rest of us. The following interview was edited for length and form. [End Page 107] Christina Connor: Thanks so much for meeting with me. I'm guessing you're a popular person right now, with the film adaptation of your book about to premiere by [acclaimed director] M. Night Shyamalan.2 It seems like a writer's dream come true. How are you feeling? Paul Tremblay: It's a strange dream! I think most writers at some point daydream about their stories being made into movies. There have been moments where it is like, "Oh my God, this doesn't seem real," such as the couple of days I was visiting the set, but the next day I was [back at work] teaching geometry. I'd wonder, did that really happen? Months would go by with nothing going on, and then something new happens, like a trailer drops, and it all sort of explodes again. Now that we're in the home stretch with just days away from the movie's premiere, I'm definitely feeling excited and anxious—mostly excited. CC: Have you gotten to see the final cut of the film? PT: I have not, but I am going to the premiere with my family. That's really cool. CC: And how's your family taking it? Are they excited? PT: Yeah, they're excited, but I'm still, you know, just the dopey dad. [laughs] CC: Dave Bautista [star of Knock at the Cabin] told me the other day that you came by the set to work with the actors, and he was very complimentary of you. What was it like to work with the artists—the actors, directors, technicians—who are bringing the adaptation to life? PT: The set visit was amazing; it was surreal but without the political aspect of surrealism. I met them at a sound studio outside of Philadelphia where they had built a cabin inside of a warehouse for the interior shots. When I first walked in, I was like, whoa, look at all this stuff: all these people, all this equipment, all these lights, all these [End Page 108] things that they need to make a movie. It didn't look like much from the outside, but the inside was beautiful, with...

Presentation and Interpretation of Power Dynamics within Character Transformations: Darren Aronofsky’s ''mother!''

The movie mother! is a psychological horror movie, written and directed in 2017 by Darren Aronofsky. The plot of the movie revolves around a couple living in an isolated house, as their serene lives become thrown into disarray by a series of bizarre events started by the arrival of a mysterious couple and many other strange guests. This movie is known for its representation of biblical symbolism, with underlying warnings of the inevitable self-destruction of human race through their historically repetitive torment of Mother Earth.The main topic of this article is going to be an analysis of the symbolic milieu of the movie, with special attention to the depiction of power dynamics of the represented (divine) feminine and masculine, as well as power relations of the characters, in general. In that process, we hope to understand the stages of their transformation, with regards to the question of the nature of their transformation - was it social or structural? Interpretation of the transformation and its nature, we also contemplate the nature of recognized process of othering in the movie, that relies on the root of the recognized power relations? All of these questions are explored through interpretation of symbolic communication, in which the architectural setting acts as a character "anchor" and a sustenance for its development, as well as the indicator and medium of its transformation.

Spawn of Satan: Parenthood as Psychological Horror in Film

Spawn of Satan: Parenthood as Psychological Horror in Film

RETRACTED ARTICLE: State Mental Hospitals: Repressive or Humanitarian

We, the Editors and Publisher of Issues in Mental Health Nursing, have retracted the following article:Flaskerud, J.H. (2022) State Mental Hospitals: Repressive or Humanitarian, Issues in Mental Health Nursing, DOI: 10.1080/01612840.2022.2139102Since publication, significant concerns have been raised about the fact that this article has substantial overlap with the following article(s): Maeda, H. (2016). The discovery of mental hospital patients: A historical epidemiology of institutionalization in the American North, 1880-1920. Social Science History, 40(3), 463-490. doi:10.1017/ssh.2016.14Hairston, S. (2022). Psychological horror or saving grace? The surprising history of asylums in America. OpenCounseling. https://blog.opencounseling.com/psychological-horror-or-saving-grace-the-surprising-history-of-asylums-in-america/Larson, Z. (2018). America's long-suffering mental health system. Origins. https://origins.osu.edu/article/americas-long-suffering-mental-health-system?language_content_entity=enMeares, H. (2015). "The insane asylum": The first twenty years of Patton State Hospital. KCET. https://www.kcet.org/history-society/the-insane-asylum-the-first-twenty-years-of-patton-state-hospitalJeffe, S. B. (1987). California: Good aims, bad results. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-03-22-op-14759-story.htmlWhen asked for an explanation, the author has agreed that there is a significant level of overlap which does not appropriately acknowledge the sources with quotations and in-text citations. As this is a breach of our Editorial Policies, we are retracting the article from the journal. The author has agreed to retract the article.We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions.The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as "Retracted".

Sessiz Oyunlar: Alman Dışavurumculuğun Distopik Oyunlardaki Etkisi-Inside, Little Nightmares, Monochroma

As tools of game development become accessible to more people, video games come closer to being an art form, rather than mere entertainment, without losing their entertainment value. Albeit the artistic value of video games has been accepted in time, the word ‘game’ causes people to overlook its relationship with art. The aim of this paper is to focus on this problem by analyzing Little Nightmares, Inside and Monochroma, in the context of German Expressionism as well as other art movements and the silent movie era, and try to explain how these games use art as a means of artistic expression while creating psychological horror and dystopian worlds. Studied games are independent games that are similar both visually and thematically. These aspects determined the boundaries of the study. In this qualitative study, chosen games are analyzed through semiotic analysis. The study showed that expressionist techniques such as distorted images, and strong contrasts in lighting have been used to build the game world and create an uncanny, totalitarian atmosphere; developers took advantage of the silent movie era and cinematic techniques to convey the narrative visually, without using dialogs. Their interactivity and unique mechanics transform art into a medium that can be experienced rather than a spectacle.

Monsters, Michael Myers, and the Macabre as Tools to Explain Ideological Framing

Framing as a metacommunicative device establishes the narrative of a given story and mobilizes emotional support. Within the framework of monster theory, horror movies are seen as a way of framing common fears about moral decay, concerns about the future, anxiety about outgroup members, and spiritual unknowns. In the classroom, we explore the monstrous body as a stand-in for the demonized (often literally) outgroup. Through tracing some of the historic roots of monsters, students are better able to see monsters as a recurring framing device for social fears. Utilizing the concepts of frame alignment (aligning individuals’ frames with larger social movement frames) and frame analysis (investigating the processes and mechanisms people utilize to make sense of situations), exploration of various subgenres of horror (including psychological horror, body horror, killers, monsters, zombies, and the paranormal) flesh out how frames are amplified, bridged, transformed, and extended.

Acting Your Age: Social and Psychological Horror in The Amusement Park and Relic

Acting Your Age:Social and Psychological Horror in The Amusement Park and Relic Adam Lowenstein (bio) There is no doubt that film critic Jason Zinoman put his finger on the pulse of something significant occurring in the horror genre when he published "Home Is Where the Horror Is" in the New York Times in 2018. The critical and commercial success of films such as The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), Get Out (Jordan Peele, 2017), and Hereditary (Ari Aster, 2018) supports Zinoman's sense that "grown-up horror" was experiencing a "golden age," one where "adult anxieties" such as loss, grief, and mourning can take center stage in a genre that has tended to approach these issues only obliquely.1 In the years since Zinoman's important critical intervention, related discussions of "elevated horror" and even "posthorror" have become more commonplace.2 While I share Zinoman's view that the 2010s may well mark a new, more "elevated" period in horror's popular perception, I am less convinced that the 2010s generation is any more "grown up" than previous generations of horror films. I am thinking particularly of horror's 1970s generation, the era of John Carpenter, Bob Clark, Larry Cohen, Wes Craven, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, Tobe Hooper, Stephanie Rothman, and George A. Romero. The 1970s generation has been rightly canonized by critics ranging [End Page 295] from Robin Wood to Zinoman himself for their landmark innovations in the language of modern horror.3 But can we call these 1970s innovations "grown up" in light of the 2010s or vice versa? Is grown-up horror the same as horror that acts its age by attaining some ideal level of maturity? And what would it mean for a horror film to "act its age" anyway? This essay argues that today's idea of grown-up horror is still ensnared in unresolved issues from criticism on 1970s horror, especially the distinction between social and psychological horror. For Wood, writing in 1979–1980, horror's growth from psychological to social concerns during the 1970s marks a new maturity in the genre. For Zinoman, writing in 2018, horror's growth from social to psychological concerns during the 2010s marks a new maturity in the genre. Attached to this social/psychological distinction are further splits between horror's collective/individual, explicit/implicit, and political/apolitical dimensions. I will contend that our understanding of horror comes of age when we cease dividing it between these poles of grown-up maturity and childish immaturity. What we need to do instead is recognize the ties that bind social and psychological horror in order to stop favoring one over the other. In its refusal to separate the social from the psychological, horror has always been a grown-up genre; it has always been acting its age. What remains is for us to catch up with horror by acting our age as critics and scholars of horror studies; we need to reframe the genre beyond preferences for social horror or psychological horror. And what better way to accomplish this task than by turning to two remarkable films from two different eras that each place aging itself at the heart of horror's significance? What George A. Romero's The Amusement Park (1973) and Natalie Erika James's Relic (2020) share, in addition to their masterful interweaving of aging and horror, is a commitment to accomplishing this interweaving by marrying the social to the psychological. What these films conjoin is what Robin Wood split asunder so influentially in 1980 when he characterized Romero's signature achievements as a progressive and even "revolutionary" horror director according to a division in his work between social horror and psychological horror.4 In "Neglected Nightmares" (1980), Wood provides a postscript to his landmark "An Introduction to the American Horror Film" (1979)—an essay that remains, even today, likely the single most influential piece of criticism on the horror film ever published.5 "Neglected Nightmares" devotes attention to several directors Wood feels he failed to give adequate consideration to in "An Introduction to the American Horror Film": Craven, Rothman, Clark, and, most significantly, Romero. In fact, Wood stakes [End Page 296] his first claim here...

Psychological Horror inn Edgar Allan Poe's The Lighthouse Keeper

The thing that most appeals to Edgar Allan Poe's work is the characteristic of his horror that seems really different from other horror literary works. His horror characteristic doesn’t exploit on blood, knife, and murder in his horror signature that known as Pyschological Horror later. In the popular film, terms often known as 3G formula namely Gun, Girl, and Ghost to attract a large audience. Horrror for Edgar Allan Poe is loneliness, isolation, and abandonment. It was in that emptiness that he wrote down the thing that scared him the most.

From Supernatural to Psychological: A Historical Study of the Concept of the 'Fantastic' in Hoffmann’s ‘The Sandman’ and Poe’s ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’

This research paper explores how and why the existing tradition of supernatural stories about ghosts and other fantastical creatures, which located terror as an external factor in these unnatural and malignant beings, was transformed in the early to mid-Nineteenth Century into tales that are instead focused on fear in terms of the internal psychology of the narrator and the protagonist. It investigates two well-known examples of psychological horror, E.TA. Hoffmann’s “The Sandman” (1816) and Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” (1843). The research paper deploys a contextual historical approach examining the impact of Romanticism as a philosophy focusing on the individual’s mental state and extreme psychological situations, as well as developing scientific ideas about psychology in the period. In my argument it is “madness” (which could affect anyone in society) that became the new fear that haunted and fascinated society, replacing the explicitly external supernatural. I also use Tzvetan Todorov’s structuralist theory and model of “the fantastic” and suggest it is possible for a psychological tale to be fantastic in a different way than he envisages, insofar as madness is itself an experience where the victim is never sure if what they experience is real or unreal.

Cohesive Devices in Literary texts: Analysis of Stephen King’s The Mist for Students of Foreign Languages, Linguistics and Translation

Text analysis constitutes one of the most challenging and complex practices for every student. Owing to this fact, linguists need a theoretical framework that would explain every linguistic device in text cohesion. Those cohesive devices may identify those units that are part of the analysed text. Among the huge amount of literary works that might be analysed, we chose one by Stephen King, one of the most prolific thriller writers of the 20th century. The aim of this study is to analyse one of his bestsellers in American Literature, The Mist, a psychological horror novella published in 1980. The main work used in this research is Hasan and Halliday’s Cohesion in English, which will be the centre of the linguistic study. Thanks to this investigation, we shall establish certain linguistic parameters to help students build a linguistic analysis to ease their academic and professional areas, such as linguistics and translation. The excerpt analysed will include certain linguistic cohesive devices, such as anaphora-cataphora, the use of direct speech, relative clauses, or Hasan and Halliday’s terms of field, tenor, and mode, among others. As a result of this, EFL students from different disciplines, such as foreign languages, translation, or linguistic studies, will therefore increase their knowledge of this literary model in order to be applied to other literary and non-literary works.

PEMBUATAN GAME 2D HORROR “BLACK, WHITE, AND …” DENGAN PLATFORM WINDOWS

"Black, White And ..." is a 2D Horror game with a sub-genre psychological horror game developed for Windows PC. This game was made using Unity as the game engine with C# as the programming language. In this game, the player will play as an amnesiac girl who has just awoken. The goal of this game is to search for a way out from the strange black and white world. The player will have to survive from the enemy and traps with the ability to move from the black world to the white world and vice versa. to ward the enemies, the player had to scream. The game has implemented a Voice Recognition feature to differentiate between scream or not scream. The testing has been done by using blackbox testing, alpha testing, and beta testing method. The test results show that most of the respondents experience a sense of fear and tension as well as the intention to play the game again.

The Representation of Mental Illness in The Movie “Ma”

Ma is a 2019 Psychological Horror movie that was directed by Tate Taylor and produced by Universal Pictures which was released in 2019. This study focuses on the main character. The objective of the study is to explain the representation of Carl Gustav Jung’s Psychoanalysis in the movie Ma. The data used the descriptive qualitative method. Carl Gustav Jung’s Psychoanalysis was used as a tool of analysis to explain the findings. The result in this study concerns Ma’s personality upbringing, she utilizes her persona to mislead the teenagers into fulfilling her desires to get her revenge on her old friends. Sue Ann's shadow gets her into a dark place in her life. She tortured the teenagers and killed Ben and Mercedes without acknowledging her bad behavior. She does not show empathy to her victims.