I see that there’s not much about horror (psychology of, but only just now had a quick look, i’m going to bed) on the internet other than to do with films/entertainment.

If I go to the dictionary definition it tells me “.. an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust”.

My little brain’s telling me that sometimes horror might be used to describe a state of mind, or internal mental state even if you like, and may feature as some activity that contributes to mental states (incuding that tending an individual to avoid things that may result in horror, which requires some practical imagination).

I wonder and doubt that it’s necessarily the same thing as terror. It might overlap.

How progressed are we after a half century or more of horror as entertainment, or has it always been entertainment right back to the ancestral environments?

I think it’s always been with us, it’s just that recently, in the last 1,000 years or so we have been able to discuss the subject.

Demos and Phombos?

bob(from black rock) said:

Demos and Phombos?

Phobos? “Fear and Terror”

some people get off on “horror” because their minds are wired up in a certain way

I rarely if ever watch horror.

true horror is often carried out in a very mundane and sanitised away

Dracula would in real life fill out some risk assessment form and send it to some government agency that has given Dracula a licence to feed on his victims for a yearly fee and insurance

Sometimes there’s horror movies, right there on my TV.
It’s awful.

Peak Warming Man said:

Sometimes there’s horror movies, right there on my TV.
It’s awful.

Shocking me right out of my brain!

I actually think many religions idea of an afterlife/heaven/ whatever horrifying, I’m not talking about the punishment of hell for being a naughty boy aspect but the so called reward for being “good”. You die and everything that you value as a human is gone, you can’t interact with loved ones, you can’t see the progress of the human race and see if we grow up and put petty differences aside. It seems false even if it was real which I personally don’t think it is.

I remember when first had kids, well, it probably started properly when the partner was first pregnant, the shift from naive fear (i’ll call it, short of words that do it better) to some ‘awareness’ of the a state of horror (mostly aversion/avoiding what may result in such a state) at the loss of or should something terrible happen. The realities of a catastrophic nurture fail am meaning, which is mostly around some terrible corner of imagination (nobody ever wants), but it’s there as a possibility, ever present.

It’s an ancient thing, a powerful instinct, this looking out for.

It extends beyond the familial.

transition said:

I remember when first had kids, well, it probably started properly when the partner was first pregnant, the shift from naive fear (i’ll call it, short of words that do it better) to some ‘awareness’ of the a state of horror (mostly aversion/avoiding what may result in such a state) at the loss of or should something terrible happen. The realities of a catastrophic nurture fail am meaning, which is mostly around some terrible corner of imagination (nobody ever wants), but it’s there as a possibility, ever present.

It’s an ancient thing, a powerful instinct, this looking out for.

It extends beyond the familial.

Yes I’d be more afraid of something happening to my children than myself, they all have far more potential in life than I do so need to try and fulfill it