Slashers and Mental Health
Slasher films have been studied through a psychoanalytic framework, aimed at understanding their implicit and symptomatic meanings regarding gender, society, and so on. Psychoanalysis is indeed a psychological framework: however, such studies are not interested in mental health issues – be they relative to the characters in the films or to the perceivers of the films. In the context of psychiatry and clinical psychology, many studies have been published apropos of the relevance of films – including horrors – for mental health. Several issues are considered: How can psychiatry and psychology help in understanding horror films, which are usually poor in verisimilitude? How do these films relate to mental health stigmas? How can horror films be used in clinical and therapeutical contexts? How may their effect on the perceivers’s mind be analyzed? Slashers are relevant to this topic: one early case study is that of Turley and Derdeyn (1990), who discuss the meaning of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) on a troubled boy and the use of the film in his psychotherapy. More recently, Tobia et al. (2013) have proposed their REDRUM psychopathology curriculum, which emphasizes the role of metaphor in understanding and using horror films – including a slasher such as Friday the 13th (1980), which may be interpreted as regarding fetal alcohol syndrome, while Friedman, Forcen and Shand (2014) consider slashers as promising both in teaching certain disorders and for using in psychotherapy. The implications of such debates for film studies will be discussed.
- Valerio Sbravatti (Sapienza University of Rome, IT)
Slasher films have been studied through a psychoanalytic framework, aimed at understanding their implicit and symptomatic meanings regarding gender, society, and so on. Psychoanalysis is indeed a psychological framework: however, such studies are not interested in mental health issues – be they relative to the characters in the films or to the perceivers of the films. In the context of psychiatry and clinical psychology, many studies have been published apropos of the relevance of films – including horrors – for mental health. Several issues are considered: How can psychiatry and psychology help in understanding horror films, which are usually poor in verisimilitude? How do these films relate to mental health stigmas? How can horror films be used in clinical and therapeutical contexts? How may their effect on the perceivers’s mind be analyzed? Slashers are relevant to this topic: one early case study is that of Turley and Derdeyn (1990), who discuss the meaning of A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988) on a troubled boy and the use of the film in his psychotherapy. More recently, Tobia et al. (2013) have proposed their REDRUM psychopathology curriculum, which emphasizes the role of metaphor in understanding and using horror films – including a slasher such as Friday the 13th (1980), which may be interpreted as regarding fetal alcohol syndrome, while Friedman, Forcen and Shand (2014) consider slashers as promising both in teaching certain disorders and for using in psychotherapy. The implications of such debates for film studies will be discussed.