Agree or disagree: Horror novels are therapeutic?

Disagree, good horror novels add a healthy dose of fear into the mix and it should take a night or two for those effects to wear off. I watched psycho when I was about 16, now 10 years later there are still times I feel uncomfortable in the shower and have to move the curtain so I can see the door.

Solid horror novels and movies leave a lasting impression and they certainly do not make you feel safer. Instead they haunt you in their own right. Or maybe it's just me.

I think there's something to be said for the rollercoaster effect, i.e., the safe scare as a way of amping tension or a cheap high, but I don't know that I'd call it therapeutic.

Just pure entertainment for me.

I don't, I think it somewhat depends honestly.

I love horror, movies, books, writing everything. That part is pure enjoyment for me.
I like the way my mind works and being able to write it down does make me feel good. However, to incorporate an issue or something that has given me grief in the past or present does help me clear my mind of the anger I'm feeling.

So for me, it's both...

I think it depends on the scare factor of the horror. Most would not cause me to lose any sleep. When I was real young it was a different story.

When I was young, they were the source of many nigthmares, but as I got older, they changed into great entertainment.

I vividly remember going to the drive-in theater between Palmdale and Lancaster, CA and seeing the Angry Red Planet when I was a little kid (1950's). I had nightmares for weeks, especially when that blob thing ate the maintenance guy, Jack Kruischen (sp?). That crunching sound made it much worse!

When I was thirteen I was told to read Stephen King's Pet Cemetary to stop being afraid of horror movies.

I did.

It worked.

As for why it worked, I don't know. Maybe it was that Mr. King is really THAT good. Or maybe it was a (sort of) self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe it was just the last push I needed to grow from childish fear to grown up coolness. Or maybe I'd stopped fearing, and just haven't noticed because I kind of avoided horror movies until then. (I had, of course, had to put the theory to test after I'd finished the book)

perhaps, but in the same way BDSM might be.

It depends on the reader. the same book could be cathartic for one reader and make the other a full blown phobic.

^ good point. an individual's perspective is key.

I think if I'd read Pet Cemetery at thirteen I'd have been the permanent phobic. Thank goodness I was only reading Nancy Drew. I got hold of a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird that the nun took away from me for being too mature. Of course, I had to go get another. I thought that was horror. But I think in either way it's therapeutic for adults. We can either safely slay demons that plague us, or face fears, both while having a good time.

If the therapeutic part was correct, then after you read a horror novel, you'd be cured, have no more fear in that area, and probably wouldn't pick up any more horror novels because they didn't scare you any more.

So I'd say no, not therapeutic.

In fact, a really good horror novel probably GIVES you NEW fears.

Horror stories play on our anxieties and delusions. Horror stories can lead us to confront them, explore them and grow past them. They can also lead us into further anxiety and delusion. I think it depends on the person and how they go about engaging the stories in the first place.

For example...

We have a lot of conflict about death. On the one hand, we all grieve when we lost someone we've loved. On the other hand, we also often benefit when our loved ones die -- not just from their estates, but the death of a loved one raises our social status, frees us from compromise and demand. Moreover, deaths around us make us feel victorious, like survivors. We acknowledge our grief but we're afraid to acknowledge our relief and our triumph that death happened to someone else and not ourselves.

Every culture fears that the dead will somehow come back to haunt us -- to torment us with their renewed demands, to claim back whatever of theirs we've appropriated, to remind us of our mortality, to turn our survivor's triumph to ash. What is that fear but our anxiety at our own mortality, our survivor's guilt, our shame at our secret triumphs and disloyalty to the dead?

A ghost story can lead us to confront those things, make sense of them, accept them. It can terrify us with our own hidden anxieties then lead us to sanity. Or it can present us with a salutory lesson that we should not confront those things. That even facing them courts the very disasters we fear.

What's the difference? Some of it's is in the story-crafting itself, I think. Some of it too is in the honesty and courage of the audience.

So why a horror format? Why not fantasy instead, say? Horror tries to explore worst-case scenarios around our anxieties and delusions. In horror, crises occur whenever we touch bottom and realise that it doesn't get worse than this. Catharsis occurs when we realise that that was survivable; it wasn't so bad after all. At that point we may exit with insights and new-found strengths of mind and character. Or we might simply exit with all those fears and delusions back in their bottle, secretly relieved that it happened to someone else, and not to ourselves.