Fernando Espi Forcen’s monograph about Monsters, Demons and Psychopaths: Psychiatry and Horror Film is so complete that I fear that anything I say will be superfluous. Dr. Espi is a physician and a practicing psychiatrist who holds a Ph.D. in art history as well as an M.D. (although the book’s back cover omits these very telling letters and lists his Ph.D. only). His art history doctorate focuses on medieval art, which itself offers an abundance of scary imagery that can complete with the best (or worst) of the silver screen. Dr. Forcen currently resides and practices psychiatry in the U.S, but he is a native of Spain, one-time home to Francisco Goya, who inadvertently kickstarted the Romantic movement through his horrific Black Paintings about the Spanish Civil War and his equally grotesque imagery of Saturn devouring his son. Goya had already abandoned his staid court portrait style that had brought him renown and (relative) riches before lead encephalopathy comprised his hearing, his hand control and his very sanity, but led to his being a lasting influence on art and on culture overall.

 Given those credentials, it should come as no surprise that Dr. Forcen’s book includes the gamut of clinical psychiatric insights, historical anecdotes and tie-ins between the distant past and the present. He merges cutting edge neuropsychiatry with psychoanalytic influences. 

 The cover itself, with its menacing sepia-toned German Expressionist shadow, foreshadows the subterranean realm explored in thirteen intriguing chapters. The dark silhouette of actor Max Shreck as he ascends a staircase was once circulated as a promotional poster for F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922). The crisp chiaroscuro imagery is clearly delineated, hinting at the ways the author illuminates his darkly disturbing subject matter. He makes his topics crystal clear, as if seen in the light of day, but never forsakes the dark realms of his subject matter. No other illustrations are included in this book, yet the cover alone stirs our imagination and forces readers to conjure up images from contemporaneous horror films. 

The author delves into horror before film and taps into his training in art history to best avail. He excavates important areas from history of psychiatry, including the Renaissance era’s conflation of psychosis with witchcraft, which led to the shameful witch hunts that persisted long past the time when shifts in scientific understanding should has snuffed them out.  He proceeds to “timeless” topics that continue to captivate us to this day: vampires; monsters; demons; zombies, for starters. He compares those figments of imagination to psychopaths and to various real-life psychotic syndromes that are diagnosed and treated by today’s psychiatrists. He explores the immutable historical links between psychiatry and supernatural explanations for strange behavior or disturbing perceptions—and tosses in psychoanalytic explanations for their unending appeal to our unconscious.

It is no wonder that a psychiatrist is interested in horror films. Horror is defined by its emotional impact on spectators.  According to Forcen, it makes its most intense impact by tapping into unconscious or pre-conscious fears that affect all of us. True, during the World War II, an unofficial genre known as “weepies” (or women’s films) was marketed to women who mourned their loss of their mates or their fathers or brothers during the war years. The weepies intentionally brought tears to the eyes of spectators. And action-adventure or “thrillers” and intended to induce anxiety or titillation. But horror stands supreme in its intent to upset its spectators and therefore may be the most psychologically compelling cinema genre. Horror also crosses over with many other genres, most commonly SF but occasionally even comedy.

The chapter on aliens from outer space connects those fictional visitors to the paranoia unleashed by the McCarthy era persecutions. During the Cold War that set in after the Second World War ended, fears of nuclear holocaust and Soviet spies escalated—along with relatively realistic worries about being targeted for Senator Joe’s Communist witch hunts. Those fears were deftly translated onto the celluloid screen. Some of those interpretations, The Manchurian Candidate (Frankenheimer, 1962), for example,bypass the horror genre and remain firmly entrenched in drama.  Sometimes, extraterrestrials are more comedic than horrifying.

The chapters on ghost hunting and the paranormal highlight different angles of these unwanted intruders. The chapter on slashers and psychopaths reminds us that unconscious fears and wishes, and ambivalence about sexual freedom and fears of AIDS in the 1980s, as well as real life events, such as the rise of serial killers, colored this much-discussed subgenre of horror films and presumably contributed to the appeal of this otherwise unappealing rendition.

Even though Monsters, Demons and Psychopaths: Psychiatry and Horror Film devotes itself to pop culture, then and now, it is clearly a serious book intended for psychiatrists and others who are intimately familiar with psychiatric theory, treatments, and history.

© 2017 Sharon Packer

Sharon Packer, MD is a psychiatrist who is in private practice in Soho (NYC) and Woodstock, NY. She is an Asst. Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Her books includeDreams in Myth, Medicine and Movies (Praeger, 2002), Movies and the Modern Psyche (Praeger, 2007) and Superheroes and Superegos: The Minds behind the Masks (Praeger/ABC-Clio, 2010). In press or in production are Sinister Psychiatrists in Cinema (McFarland, 2012) and Evil in American Pop Culture (ABC-Clio, 2013, co-edited with J. Pennington, PhD.) She can be contacted at drpacker@hotmail.com .