Freud - The Return of the Repressed, And It's Relation To Horror

The return of the repressed is the process whereby repressed elements, preserved in the unconscious, tend to reappear, in consciousness or in behavior, in the shape of secondary and more or less unrecognizable "derivatives of the unconscious." To put it in more easily understandable terms, Freud is saying that repressed feelings that you have might stay with you sub-consciously, and you may exercise these feelings later in life without necessaries realising why. A typical example of this would be a young child getting bullied, and then later in life he becomes a bully himself; or perhaps acts over-excessively on any power he gains. This is somewhat relative to Freuds theory, since when the young boy becomes the bully or abuser of power, he probably doesn't consciously relate it to his childhood experiences, but the likely is that it does derive from those precise experiences.

But how does this relate to horror? Well, when you think about it, many 'classic' horror storylines feature some sort of childhood anxiety followed up by committing some sort of atrocity (Usually murder). A film which very much follows this trend sis one that I have recently watched in my Media class - Halloween (1971). Near the start of the film, a young boy witnesses his sisters sexual relationship before stabbing her . When the boy is older, he murders several people - all of which are either about to have sex, or have just had sex. The only exception is Laurie, the "Final Girl" who is essentially the only remaining friend in the group of friends being murdered.