A Mutual Fascination: British Horror and the Psy Disciplines

This week I’ve been chatting with Dave Jeffrey and Lee Murray, whose recent collection This Way Lies Madness has been nominated for a Bram Stoker Award @horrorwritersassoc.bsky.social. Congratulations to them! 🎉🎉🎉Read more about the collection over on our blog horror.glasgow.ac.uk/this-way-lie...

New post now live on the project blog. Follow this link (horror.glasgow.ac.uk/herbert-read...) to learn more about how art critic Sir Herbert Read thought about the horror comics controversy of the 1950s

Our project blog is now up and running. Stay tuned for research news, events and more...
horror.glasgow.ac.uk

The Ice Tower, which tells of a young girl's obsession with Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen, resonates with mid-century pscyhological approaches to horror. Hadžihalilovic's film draws out the seductive danger in Andersen's tales that led P.M. Pickard to deem them 'unsuitable for children'.

'And, if we become gripped by this type of fear, our minds
are opened wide to the psychological suggestion that we
too are at risk of invasion by similar powers of evil.'
- A pamphlet distributed by campaigners at screenings of The Exorcist (Ban this Filth! Letters from the Mary Whitehouse Archive)

Great to spend some time with the Herbert Read archive at Leeds University Cultural Collections this morning. Very interesting to see how intertwined discourses on aesthetic education and psychology were in the post-war years.

'The paradox of horror': How scary films can soothe your anxiety Jump scares and gore might not seem like the most soothing watching, but scary films can actually be the ideal therapy during anxious times.

For my American horror homies this Thanksgiving: A great article to send a family member on why we love scary movies. www.bbc.com/future/artic... #horrorcommunity #horrormovies #anxiety

Psych ward gothic: melodrama, hospitalisation anxiety and a case for the humanities in psychiatric research This article offers a critical assessment of representations of psychiatric hospitalisation in modern Western societies, with the goal of informing clinicians’ approach to communication and reassuranc...

Great to see this article by @alasmorrison.bsky.social that explores the relationship between genre fiction and psychiatric care while making a case for interdisciplinary study.

mh.bmj.com/content/earl...

"And where do you live, Simon"? The Asylum and its Patients on Film - The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies Exploring film, folklore, and media, this lecture asks why female rage is pathologised while male violence remains disturbingly normalised.

London folks: come to @miskatonicihs.bsky.social on 9 December to hear Headpress Press Officer @harbottlestores.bsky.social talk about the history of the asylum on film.
#histpsych #horror #session9 #historyofhorror #horrorstudies

Tickets: miskatonicinstitute.com/events/the-a...

A photo of a blank notebook and two books; P.M. Pickard's I Could A Tale Unfold and Martin Baker's A Haunt of Fears: The Strange History of the British Horror Comics Campaign.

work begins...