Casting Shadows: Playing in the Realm of Monsters

Doug Ronning, MFT, RDT-BCT

From coast to coast, zombies have taken to the streets! In Portland, Maine, the stumbling
undead suddenly appear amidst a crowd. In a flash, the music of Michael Jackson's
Thriller begins, and the undead, made up of both amateur and professional dancers,
recreate the iconic music video. Across the country in Portland, Oregon, the Portland
Food Bank is the recipient for a fundraising Zombie Walk with the tagline: "We may eat
brains, but we do have hearts!" And it's not just zombies. Every October, more than 2,500
interactive haunted houses spring up around the world, where local residents dress up to
gleefully terrify visitors on country hayrides, in backyard mazes, on movie studio backlots, and in abandoned prisons.
Zombies, vampires, aliens, and other monsters are prevalent on today's movie screens,
televisions, and book shelves. This may hint at current cultural anxieties, but there is a
long history of fascination with these mysterious forms across cultures. Monsters run
rampant through folklore, religion, fairy tales, and mythology, and clinical practitioners
have drawn inspiration from them since the onset of psychotherapy.
Many dont understand the allure of monster movies, particularly those pictures designed
to horrify and instill dread. Even more bewildering is this impulse to spend days every
Autumn putting on makeup and terrifying people, even when those people are paying for
the privilege to be scared. In an attempt to understand the appeal of horror, film critics,
cultural analysts, psychologists, and psychotherapists have examined the genre using various psychological orientations, including psychoanalytic, existential, and postmodern
views. For more information, see Horror Film and Psychoanalysis: Freud's Worst
Nightmare, a collection of essays edited by Steven Jay Schneider and Horror and the
Holy: Wisdom-Teachings of the Monster Tale by Kirk J. Schneider.
The first half of this article will explore a variety of these views. The latter half will explore monster archetypes through more embodied drama therapy approaches.
Beginning in the 1970s, the popular essays of film critic Robin Wood explored classic
psychoanalytic interpretations of monster movies, based in Freud's linked conceptions of
repression and the uncanny (Wood, 1986). Wood states "One might say that the true subject of the horror genre is all that our civilization oppresses and represses" (1986, p. 68).
Stanley Kubrick, while discussing his film The Shining with film critic Michel Ciment,
offered, In his essay on the uncanny, Das Unheimliche, Freud said that the uncanny is
the only feeling which is more powerfully experienced in art than in life. If the horror
genre required any justification, I should think this alone would serve as its
credentials (Ciment, 1980).

Many monster stories speak to questions of existential psychology: survival, fear of

death, life purpose, somatization, and generativity. In Holy and the Horror: WisdomTeachings of the Monster Tale, existential psychotherapist Kirk Schneider (1993), states
that any common physical sensation or human emotion can become monstrous in the extreme: unceasing hunger, boundless adoration, and uncontrollable sight all have given
birth to monster characters. These basic fears can be as horrific as the fear of debilitating
illness and painful lingering death; all represent an imprisonment within the body. Even
good health can be excruciating; for being healthy carries responsibility and freedom,
which can even more painfully remind us of the boundaries of our abilities (Ziegler,
1991) which in turn invites the fantasy of extreme deviation.
As in narrative therapy, postmodern interpretations of monster stories cast the monster as
the problem; the monster is either a catalyst for change, or a staunch defender of the
status quo that needs to be vanquished. In the introduction to Monsters in the Closet:
Homosexuality and the Horror Film, homosexuality is compared to the Wolfman,
Frankenstein's monster, mad scientists, and vampires - all of whom challenge "the very
foundations of society" (Benshoff, 1997, p. 1). Film critic and sociologist Andrew Tudor,
identifies the emergence of paranoid horror (widespread confusion as in Night of the Living Dead or Texas Chainsaw Massacre) in the 1960's as the "erosion of the foundations
of social legitimacy in many western societies," going on to call it the "age of delegitimization" (Tudor, 1989, p. 222).
As rich as the view of monster movies is from the (psychoanalysts) couch, there is one
key element that none account for- why people so often love and empathize with the
monster. In Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence, journalist Gerard Jones shares a story about his son crying when the monster is killed at the end of Beast From 2000 Fathoms. His son refused to watch another
monster movie until his dad promised him "the creature would survive at the end" (Jones,
2002, p. 90). Jones goes on to point out that the Japanese filmmakers behind kaiju (giant
monster) movies like Godzilla recognized that the monsters were lovable and sympathetic, and they always allowed the monster to survive at the end.
This mirrors my own experience; my first transcendent cinematic recollection is from a
revival screening of the original King Kong in the mid 1970's. The death of Kong marked
the first time I cried at a movie. The giant ape was easily the most likable male figure in
the picture, and the true villain was the greedy theatre producer who sealed the monster's
doom. Kong was bigger than life and driven by love, and to a thirteen year old gay kid
who felt out of place in the world, he was every bit the tragic hero.
In the abstract for Horror Films: Tales to Master Terror or Shapers of Trauma?, the two
authors, both medical doctors, state "the horror film can be seen as a cultural tale that
provides a mechanism for attempting mastery over anxieties involving issues of separation, loss, autonomy, and identity. An individual will identify with narrative elements that

resonate in personal life experiences and cultural factors embedded within the film,
which carry levels of either stress that will be mastered, or act as a trauma to the
viewer" (Ballon & Leszcz, 2007, p. 211).
A number of drama therapists have written about their work employing monsters. Ann
Cattanachs (1996) The Use of Dramatherapy and Play Therapy to Help De-brief Children after the Trauma of Sexual Abuse, offers a potent example of empowering a child by
having her face and overcome a dream monster. One of the most noteworthy points in the
article was Cattanachs assertion that the dream monster not be killed for if it is later
resurrected in the childs dreams it then becomes all-powerful.
The all-powerful nature of the monsters in our dreams and childhood fantasies remains
within us into adulthood, feeding our shadows. As Noga Levine-Keini and Brurit Laub
state in the abstract of Dealing with Monsters, Monsters are a universal element in our
inner life (1999, p. 120). Their work to find therapeutic ways to deal with monsters in
the psyche is built on two approaches: Jungs (1960) work emphasizing the development
of the ego, where the inner monsters reside; and the work of White and Epston (1990)
who pioneered externalizing and personifying inner problems. By integrating the two approaches Levine-Keini and Laub (1999) came up with three missions, beginning with
creation, moving to confrontation with the monster, and finally, relief from the monster.
Moving beyond dialogue, the two therapists employ tools from the various creative arts
therapies psychodramatic scenes, drawing, and sculpting, to experientially explore the
conflict between the client and their monster.
Over the past decade, I've employed and adapted Levine-Keini and Laub's (1999) model
to work with clients confronting Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), addictions, and
eating disorders.
I learned about Levine-Keini and Laubs work while still in graduate school, while writing a literature review based on their article and developing an idea for a drama therapy
workshop employing monster archetypes. Despite the enthusiasm of my cohort over the
monster exercises I'd adapted or created, the workshop didn't happen for several years.
It was when these zombie flash mobs and extravagant haunted houses started appearing
in the mainstream that I recognized a cultural act hunger, a desire for enactment, and decided it was time to resurrect my work, and thus the Monster Movie Salon was born.,
In the Salon, now in its fourth year, we explore monster films through psychological, cultural, and personal lenses. Rather than taking the victim's point of view, we focus on the
wisdom in the monsters story. The distancing device of the monster allows us to explore
meaningful material, such as the family shadow, income inequality, anxious/avoidant attachment, and identity politics, in a fun and dynamic way. We watch film clips not just
from horror movies, but family films, dramas, comedies, and musicals in which monsters
appear, while alternatively engaging in free writing, group discussion, and dramatic play.

This juxtaposition of communal film viewing and embodiment can lead to fresh insights.
We transition back and forth between the cinematic realm and that of the participant's
subjective experience, to explore a phenomenology (Blatner &Blatner, 1997) of monsters. For example, one exercise invites participants to consider human somatic experience by manifesting shuffling zombies, floating ghosts, and stomping daikaiju, inviting
an experience of constriction and expansion (Schneider, 1993). A sampling of other exercises in the workshop series include an adaptation of Sound and Movement Transformations called Monster Transformations, a monster role analysis, Famous Monster Sculpture
Museum, and a three-part story exercise about an encounter with a monster.
By exploring the monster's story through human experience, we see beyond the fears they
induce, to the wisdom they can impart. The monster characters of cinema give shape to
obsessions, compulsions, insecurities, unnamed desires, unwanted emotions, and painful
memories - the very things that bring people into psychotherapy! Thrust from the human
imagination, monsters are a continuum of us, offering meaningful lessons on what it
means to be human.

References
'Thriller' Flash Mob Breaks Out in Downtown Portland, Maine, (2013, October 24) Retrieved March 20, 2015, from http://on.aol.com/video/thriller-flash-mob-breaks-out-indowntown-portland--maine-517985778
Oregon Food Bank, Inc.'s Portland Zombie Walk, (2009, October 24) Retrieved March
20, 2015, from http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/blanca-garcia-rinder/portlandzombiewalk
10 Great Halloween Haunted House Attractions Across The U.S., (2013, September 20)
Retrieved March 20, 2015, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/larryolmsted/
2013/09/20/10-great-halloween-haunted-house-attractions-across-the-us/
Ciment, M. Interview with Stanley Kubrick (1980) Retrieved March 20, 2015, from http://
genius.cat-v.org/stanley-kubrick/interviews/ciment/the-shining
Ballon B., &Leszcz M. (2007). Horror films: tales to master terror or shapers of trauma?.
American Journal of Psychotherapy; 61(2), 211-30.
Benshoff, H. (1997). Monsters in the Closet: Homosexuality and the Horror Film. New
York, NY: Manchester University Press

Blatner, A., & Blatner, A. (1997). The Art of Play: Helping Adults Reclaim Imagination
and Spontaneity. New York, NY: Brunner/Mazel, Inc.
Cattanach, A., (1996). The Use of Dramatherapy and Play Therapy to Help De-brief
Children after the Trauma of Sexual Abuse. In Alida Gersie (Ed.) Dramatic Approaches
to Brief Therapy (pp.177-187).
Jones, G. (2002). Killing Monsters: Why Children Need Fantasy, Super Heroes, and
Make-Believe Violence. New York, NY: Basic Books
Jung, C. G. (1960). The collected works of C.J. Vol. 14. Princeton: Princeton University
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Levine-Keini, N., & Laub, B. (1999). Dealing with monsters. Family Therapy, 26(2),
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Schneider, K. (1993). Horror and the Holy: Wisdom-Teachings of the Monster Tale.
Chicago, IL: Open Court
Tudor, A. (1989). Monsters and Mad Scientists: A Cultural History of the Horror Movie.
Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, Inc. (p. 222)
White, J. & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.
Wood, R. (1986). Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan. New York, NY: Columbia UP
Ziegler, A. J. (1991). Illness as Descent into the Body. In Jeremiah Abrams, & Connie
Zweig (Eds.), Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature (pp. 29-34). New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam
BIO:
Doug Ronning, (http://dougronning.com) MFT, RDT/BCT, is a Drama Therapist with a
private practice in San Francisco, CA and an Adjunct Professor at the California Institute
of Integral Studies. He is a lifelong fan of creature features, a produced screenwriter
(HBOs Tales From the Crypt), and creator of the Monster Movie Salon (http://monstermoviesalon.com)