Monsters on the Couch: The Real Psychological Disorders Behind Your Favorite Horror Movies
Published by Chicago Review Press, 2024. 274 pages.
By Brian A. Sharpless

When I started reading this title, I thought it would be a look at specific movie titles and putting them through a psychological profile or study of the monster. It’s kind of is that, but not really specific movies, though there are a few. It mainly covers the different real-life psychological disorders that plague some people, that are tied into different horror sub-genres. Granted, some of these disorders are pretty rare, but honestly, some of them are pretty damn fascination.

We get to read about the history of lycanthropy, going back to folklore hundreds of years before we saw them on the big screen. Did you know that in Serbia, it is believed that if you drink water that has collected in the paw print of a wolf, you can become a werewolf? Or in Scandinavia, you’ll get the curse by wearing a wolfskin belt. Or there are many different kinds of ‘anthropy’, from turning into a horse, cow, or even a gerbil! It is kind of cool to see where it started, and how it… transformed into what we know about werewolf legends and mythology now because of film. Once the movie world gets a hold of it, those almost becomes the new “facts”, even though 90% of them came from some screenwriter’s imagination.