Return of the Repressed

The return of the repressed is a a symptom of pyschological health in which past memories that may appear 'forgotten' or behavioural aspects that have disappeared overtime return and take physical form.

In horror it relates to those films where we see 'uncanny' villains. This is normally where we see, in short, the abused become the abuser. It is these kind of 'immortal memories' that normally shape our lives in reality so it makes these types of films seem more believable and more terrifying on a psychological level. The iconic villain 'Jason' is an example of a child who had an abusive past and horrible history which drove him to become an unstopppable murderer, who is driven by the repressed memories of his childhood. In some cases the audience can relate to these memories and understand the things they went through and it would give them a shocking look into what they could possibly be capable of, whether they believe it or not!

If we seek more clarification on the full potential of the repressed mind, manifesting in a character we need look no further than films such as Friday the 13th and the Freddy vs Jason iconic rivalry. These two characters represent the immortality of the mind and the indestructibillity of dreams and memories. Watching films like this shows us as an audience how serious 'an eye for an eye' can be as the characters in films such as these tend to suffer a fate that is an exaggerated form of what they do in their lives. Many films use this as a theme because it is one we understand as humans, if it was an alien creature in the same position we would probably not feel the same empathy and would not understand the messages but in these sucessful films the makers definately know how to make us fear the tortured soul, in a chilling psychological terror