By CRISTY SHAUCK
Summer's coming, bringing with it another onslaught of horror movies to entertain and titillate--you know, get the old juices flowing. But there's more to why we lust after this genre than the old heart-thumping, chill-up-the-spine feelings they induce, said Dr. Daniel Lapin, a San Francisco psychologist in private practice.
Those who write horror stories and movie scripts may be unconsciously working out their own childhood abuse, said Lapin, who specializes in working with adults who were abused as children. And those who read the books and watch the movies may also be dealing with childhood abuse.
In an effort to educate the public and counseling professionals, Lapin, author of The Vampire, Dracula and Incest , arranged a series of panel discussions on horror to be held at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books in the Cupertino Oaks Shopping Center on Stevens Creek Boulevard. Panelists include six San Francisico-based practitioners: Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., Lenore Terr, M.D., Kirk J. Schneider, Ph.D., Karen Peoples, Adrienne Amundsen, Ph.D, and Lapin himself.
According to Lapin, Bram Stoker, the author of Dracula, was abused as a child.
"Whenever we find people who have been traumatized, they are repeating things again and again. Stoker has all the characteristics of anybody who's stuck in a repetition compulsion."
Dr. Krippner was 12 when he dreamed that a favorite relative had died.
Within the next 24 hours, that person died suddenly at a young age. Krippner went on to study dreams and parapsychology. He became interested in traditional healers called shamans.
"As time went on, I found out that in their traditions, they also appeal to the inner shaman, the shaman in each one of us. When we find our inner shaman, this is something that can help us fight our own internal horrors.
"When I say 'inner shaman,' I am referring to the immune system, a person's self-healing system," he said.
While counseling children and adults who survived plane crashes and other catastrophic events, Lenore Terr noted that these terrified people later often saw ghosts, heard strange sounds in their rooms or experienced deja vu.
Terr will discuss the connection between being traumatized and having horrible experiences and then being able to express that to an audience.
"Horror collectively serves some purpose of trying to master actions in ourselves and of our own traumatic experience and the world's undigested pain," Peoples said. "It's a way of putting it in some kind of time-limited digestive framework, which we can survive by closing the book, the close of the film."
Schneider, author of Horror and the Holy, said: "For me, what compels about the horror tale is that it in many ways is a tale of liberation. I'm talking about classical horror, not the slice-and-dice stuff. I think that's more for quick thrills."
Classic horror tales involve transgressing ordinary bounds of living, Schneider said. "Frankenstein is a classic example of transcending the bounds of life for the creation of the monster, attempting to create a superphysical being. It's going beyond the ordinary passions, excitements we experience. Both Victor Frankenstein and the monster embody a kind of frenzied enthusiasm about living that far exceeds normal bounds."
Upcoming panel discussions include "The Unconscious Revealed in Horror Film and Literature" on April 29 and "From Demonic Possession to Alien Abduction: Varieties of Dissociative Experience" on May 13. Both panels begin at 7:30 p.m. and are free.
This article appeared in the Cupertino Courier, April 16, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.