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How can a deeper understanding of mental health help us see our world, and ourselves, differently? Hosted by therapist Kurt White and journalist Mary Wilson, each episode of Unravelling explores a complex mental health topic with insights from both professionals and people with lived experience. Whether you're trying to make sense of the world or just the slice of it inside of your head, Unravelling is here to foster a more compassionate and informed perspective on life.
The content of this podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered medical advice. Always consult with a qualified health care professional for any health concerns. Take care of yourself out there. Welcome to Unravelling, the podcast that sees the world through the lens of mental health. I'm Curt White, a social worker and psychotherapist.
Mary:And I'm Mary Wilson, a journalist. And Curt, I don't know if you noticed that cool chill in the air. It felt nice and crisp this morning.
Kurt:It sure did. We're getting into that, really into that time of year now, aren't we, where the the leaves are changed and falling and we transition more toward, you know, thoughts of death and dying and winter and horrors that are coming and lurking in the shadows.
Mary:I wasn't thinking about it that way until now.
Dr. Schlozman:Oh, well,
Kurt:maybe it's just me.
Mary:Well, we got a really fun opportunity to speak with someone who is very much in that world. He's actually an expert on zombies, as well as many other things, including a child psychiatrist. And, we'll be exploring the world of horror and how it can actually be a a really beautiful way of storytelling and talking about mental health.
Kurt:If I didn't... If I hadn't met him myself, I'd think you were joking telling me about the child psychiatrist, an expert on zombies. But but, no, in fact, we do have such a person. Are you much of a horror person yourself?
Mary:I'm really not. We get into that a little bit in the interview. And he's sort of inspired me to maybe pick up a film or two and give it a try when it comes to horror.
Kurt:Let's see if he convinces you.
Mary:Shall see.
Kurt:Who is this very diverse resume to human?
Mary:Doctor Stephen Schlozman is professor psychiatry and division head for child psychiatry at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont. He studies the intersection of humanities and medicine and has written two horror novels, including the one we mentioned, Zombie Autopsies, and numerous short stories in addition to more than 50 academic publications.
Kurt:Well, I can't wait for your interview here and to to see what this is all about.
Mary:Doctor. Schlossman, welcome to Unravelling.
Dr. Schlozman:Thanks very much for having me.
Mary:Let's start out with a time when a piece of horror media made you most terrified Because I know mine was very early on in life, and they got a sleepover. How about you?
Dr. Schlozman:Okay. So here's the deal I'm gonna make. I will tell you. I'm happy to tell you, but I also wanna hear yours if we have time for it because these are stories I love to to collect. I've done a TED Talk on horror, and so this story is in that TED Talk.
Dr. Schlozman:It was watching the made for TV version of Salem's Lot, which is a Stephen King novel. The novel is actually scarier than the made for TV show, but I was like, I don't think I was born about 11 years old. My parents were away. They were out, you know, in a movie or something. My sister had a sleepover, so it's just me and my dog.
Dr. Schlozman:And we were in the basement, and... Which had... You got a picture. It was, like, an eighties or probably seventies, I guess, because I was 11. Shag carpet, wooden panel walls, like right out of an episode of Freaks and Geeks.
Dr. Schlozman:And I'm watching Salem's Lot, which is a vampire story, and there's a scene where the two kids decide to take the shortcut through the woods, and one gets taken by a vampire. He gets taken by a big black blob. You don't know what it is, but you assume it's a vampire. And then the next scene, the one who makes it home was in trouble because they took the shortcut. He's been sent to bed, and he's in his bed, and then he sees his brother outside the window, but it's a second story window, so there's no reason.
Dr. Schlozman:His brother should be up there, and he's floating, and he's scratching on the window. And he has these kind of bile colored eyes and long nails. And that part, I was like, okay. This is this is interesting. I was leaning in.
Dr. Schlozman:But then the brother lets him in. And if you note your vampire lore, vampires can't get you unless you invite them into your house. So once the vampire was in the house, was those lights were on. It was like, came over. I'm gonna, like, run upstairs, check all the doors.
Dr. Schlozman:My dog was, like, trying to figure out why I was so freaked out. That was the first movie that really scared me, and what's funny about it is I was really scared. But now I tell it with a smile. And I think that that's key to how people who appreciate scary stories appreciate scary stories. It's important that they're stories.
Dr. Schlozman:Right? Like, if this had truly happened, it would be absolutely terrifying, and I would be traumatized.
Mary:Yeah. You were truly terrified, but something about it or the aftermath was fun.
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. Well, you get to lean in to the terror at that point. Like... And not everybody should... Like, the worst thing you could do is make somebody watch a scary movie if they don't wanna watch it.
Dr. Schlozman:Like, there's plenty of things we have to do. Why would you make them do that? But you have a sense, if you like stories, that it's still a story. So you get the experience, the practice of being afraid, but you know you're gonna be okay. It's...
Dr. Schlozman:I think that's actually one of the reasons... This is not my idea. A lot of people say this. This is one of the reasons people are drawn to that particular genre of of narrative, scary things, horror.
Mary:You know you're safe deep down even though you are so scared.
Dr. Schlozman:It's it's a roller coaster. Right? Like, you get on, and and nobody really... I mean, obviously, people get hurt on roller coasters, but it's pretty unusual. Most of the time, you put your hands in the air.
Dr. Schlozman:You show you can take it. You get off. Some people are really scared. Some people are smiling. Watch people get off the roller coaster.
Dr. Schlozman:You can see the same set of emotions that you see at the end of a scary movie.
Mary:It sounds like you were alone watching this movie. I was at a sleepover. I think I was around the same age, like maybe 12 years old, and I was quite sheltered. I think I'd only watched PBS Kids shows up until that point, and it was that movie The Ring, and I was so scared.
Dr. Schlozman:That was terrifying, Phil.
Mary:Was were alone. Terrifying. Yes. And I think part of the friends snuck in at one point and scared us all half to death. But we were all snuggled up on the couch, bunch of girls, and it was sort of a bonding moment.
Mary:Right? There's some community in it.
Dr. Schlozman:So since you brought it up, there's two things that you just said that are actually consistent with a whole lot of both market literature and psychological literature on scary stories, on on horror movies especially. The first is that the average age where people see their first horror film... This is a pretty large study. It was over a thousand subjects. It was around 11.
Dr. Schlozman:Wow. So I was 11. You were 11 or 12. The second part is that horror is transgressive, so you get away with it. You know, I was by...
Dr. Schlozman:My parents never would have allowed me to see this. Your folks probably wouldn't have approved of you saying, don't bring that. No. So it's it's always about... It's kind of a safe moment of transgression.
Dr. Schlozman:It's a whole lot safer than, you know, sneaking out at two in the morning or something like that. And the third part is community. So I said there's two. There's actually three. The third part is that you had your friends there.
Dr. Schlozman:I was by myself, but I've told other people about it. You had your friends. It was a bonding moment. This is why you should always go to the theater to see these things Mhmm. Or or at least see them with a group of people as you did.
Dr. Schlozman:What
Mary:really is going on in our brains psychologically? You know, our brains are designed to protect us from fear, but we willingly, especially you, you seek out these films. Right?
Dr. Schlozman:Yep. So to be clear, not everybody seeks them out, and that's fine. There's no, there's plenty of gauntlets that are thrown down that we actually have to, you know, do. This is not one of them. But if you like them, then there's a whole lot of research that's been done on folks who find that they like horror films.
Dr. Schlozman:And then the first most important thing, you asked what's going on in the brain, is the brain is frightened. So the fight or flight mechanism gets triggered among people who see horror films, those who like them and those who don't like them. The ones who are like, yeah. I don't care. They don't have much of a response.
Dr. Schlozman:But the ones who really dislike them and the ones who really like them, you have increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, increased skin conductance. All those studies have been done. The skin conductance is you sweat, so there's more sodium, and so the electricity, travels more efficiently across your skin. That's the first thing. The second thing is there's this process called metacognition, and that's when you think about what you're thinking.
Dr. Schlozman:That's what it means. So cognition, next to cognition, metacognition. You think, why was I afraid? I know I was afraid, but why was I afraid? And that's one of the ways that I actually have learned to tolerate these films.
Dr. Schlozman:I didn't always... Like, there have been movies that would scare me more had I not said to myself, okay. This got to me, but what was it about this film that got to me? That leads to the third thing, which is this desire our brains have to make sense of things that are a little bit recognizable but a little bit off. This is this is kinda shrinky, but this is what Freud called the uncanny, where something is familiar but a little bit off.
Dr. Schlozman:The monster's got two legs, two arms, two eyes, mouth. It looks human like, but something's not right about it. That's the classic zombie. Like, it it is recognizable as grandma, but it's not right. And eventually, it gets too close to you, and it bites you.
Dr. Schlozman:That girl in the ring with the hair on her face who comes out of the TV, that's pattern recognition. She's on the TV. Everything's safe, but now she's coming out of the TV.
Mary:Oh gosh. That's chilling. Face value, you might think a horror film is just the gore and the jump scares, but you're sort of suggesting there really is something more profound there when you really look into it.
Dr. Schlozman:I I think so. There's plenty of films that are just gore and jump scares, and and that's fine. People can make those. I don't actually like them so much that... I I don't mind the gore, but it's gotta be there for a purpose.
Dr. Schlozman:It's gotta serve a purpose. Sometimes there's plenty of gore that's just there for comedy. The the first movie that the guy who went on to make all the Lord of the Rings movies made, he was made a movie called dead alive, and it's it's about a weird zombie outbreak in New Zealand. It's a comedy, and there's just so much gore. Just strikes to be silly.
Dr. Schlozman:The Evil Dead movies are the same with the same, like, over the top gore. But, generally, I don't want it just to be for the sake of pain. I want it to be because it serves a narrative purpose. Humor, fear, overwhelming, things like that.
Mary:So it sounds like just being scared isn't the whole point of horror, at least in your No.
Dr. Schlozman:That that were the case, you would just watch movies of spiders jumping. Right? Like, just like... Because you would have the scary thing, which is the spider, and then you'd have the jump, the jump scare. And there have been experiments doing that, but eventually people acclimate to that.
Dr. Schlozman:You show somebody a video of a spider walking down a stick and then jumping, which a lot of spiders do. Eventually, you're not so bothered by it. But in the beginning, you're really scared. That
Mary:was kind of creepy, the part where you were talking about, things just being just a little off, like, the grandma turning into a zombie. Is that really the fascination with zombies for you? When did when did you start thinking about zombies as sort of metaphors for other things in life?
Dr. Schlozman:So I didn't think of it directly that way. Here's here's what happened, and I can tell the story now because everything's fine. But at the time, my wife was sick. She had breast cancer. My daughters were little.
Dr. Schlozman:I couldn't sleep. So I would get everybody to sleep, and I go downstairs and would watch whatever was on TV. Night of living dead was always on, and that's because it never got a copyright. So I was watching this movie and thinking, god. There's something wrong.
Dr. Schlozman:I mean, yes. Those are zombies. George Romero, who I know pretty well, he didn't call them zombies. He called them ghouls. So they would sort of shamble around.
Dr. Schlozman:And I remember thinking that shambling, that behavior, that confusion, that's a that's a medical issue. So I wrote a fake medical paper about it, and that shot around the Internet. And then I got a call from a publisher, and they said, would you write a book on this? And I said, sure. And I agreed to do it for free.
Dr. Schlozman:And then a friend of mine called and said, you know, that publisher is a for profit company. You should probably have a book contract. Yeah. Good point. So I got an agent.
Dr. Schlozman:And then I start thinking, well, jeez, this is actually not a bad metaphor. I was actually just curious. Like, what is it about this particular subgenre of horror, the zombie movie, really, that that Romero invented? When when you think there were zombie movies before George, but there weren't the same kind of zombie movies. Why are they so popular?
Dr. Schlozman:What do they what do they bring to our psyche that makes people go back again and again and again? And some of it is that uncanny that I talked about, the grandma... It's hope. Right? It's the reason you stick around when grandma's coming through the fog and dragging her leg and not walking quite right, but you're hoping maybe she hasn't been bit.
Dr. Schlozman:Maybe she hasn't. And if you're in the audience, you're thinking, oh my god. I I... He should run, but he's not gonna run because it's his grandma. And then eventually grandma gets too close, and he hasn't run, and she lunges and bites him, and then you got another person.
Dr. Schlozman:Oh gosh.
Mary:And there's this dehumanizing aspect, right, with zombies is like once you're bit, you sort of stop being human. Right? Yeah.
Dr. Schlozman:And so I like I I like that idea from a narrative perspective, but I also find it a very threatening construct in medicine, and and I'm curious about that. There there is this moment in the emergency room, in the hospital, maybe especially with with psychiatric patients and maybe especially especially with psychosis, where you other somebody. You're like, they are... They're recognizable, but what they're experiencing feels so foreign to me that I've decided they are a different kind of human. So horror movies and zombie movies in particular, they're cautionary tales.
Dr. Schlozman:They're saying when you dehumanize these zombies, it gets bad for you, and it always does. It always does in those movies. So what we need then to do is be wary of those moments where we dehumanize the people who are in front of us who are are seeking our help.
Mary:And what's the answer to not dehumanizing these patients? Is it learning their stories and the human behind the diagnosis?
Dr. Schlozman:No. The answer is learning the stories. Exactly. So what do... If we ask somebody to tell us their story, we can't help but to feel empathy for them.
Dr. Schlozman:Because once you're involved, once your your brain is taking place in their narrative, so you're asking questions, but what you should really ask is what happened next, and then what, and then what? And then you're watching for the expressions. They're gonna tell you the plot beats, but they're also gonna tell you how they felt in those plot beats. You don't have to ask that. You can listen for those moments where they don't tell you a feeling.
Dr. Schlozman:You make note of it, and then later you say, hey. I noticed it was hard for you to tell me what was going on there. Those those narrative beats create a Venn diagram that slowly overlaps because I've never heard a story that I can't re... I I should be careful how I say this, but, like, that I can't relate to in some way. I I...
Dr. Schlozman:The reason to be careful is perhaps someday someone will tell me a story. I'm like, oh, I can't go there. But there's always... There's humans. Right?
Dr. Schlozman:So there's always something human going on.
Mary:And you primarily work with children. Right?
Dr. Schlozman:Yep. Kids, adolescents. And I have a number of, I guess, young adults, transition like youth too.
Mary:And how does horror come into play when you're talking with these kids? Is it something that you both can find common ground on?
Dr. Schlozman:So I don't don't bring it up, because I don't want them to feel like I'm I'm usurping the... Like, so I'll talk... As you can see, I'll talk about it forever. There there are certain things in my office that will grab their attention there. You can't see it, but up on my shelf, there's a bloody hand coming out of a pedicle.
Dr. Schlozman:It's a little bit hidden, but some kids notice it and some don't. The Internet makes some kids just look you up ahead of time, and they'd look me up, and they say, oh, yeah. He's maybe a doctor, but he's also done this TED Talk, and he's been involved in some movies and stuff. And so then they say, yeah. I wanna see this guy.
Dr. Schlozman:So they bring it up. But if they bring it up, I never say, let me tell you why I like it. I'll say, what do you like about it? And if we believe what we think about stories is people are always telling you what's going on in their world through the story, no matter what story you ask them to tell you.
Mary:Do you think horror can provide some sort of comfort or understanding for someone who is struggling with anxiety or other mental health challenges?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. Within limits. Right? Like, somebody... There is a literature on people who have developed either what appears to be all of the symptoms of trauma, or PTSD or at least some of the sequelae of PTSD from watching a scary movie.
Dr. Schlozman:I'm not... Have to go back and look at the literature, but I think it was the ring. Actually, that was in one of those articles. It may have been the exorcist, though. But but, I mean, you know, you can understand these are these are scary movies.
Dr. Schlozman:So you would never force someone to watch it. Usually, watching these films are transgressive, as we said. You don't tell anybody. You get away with it, and you tell your friends later. In those cases, if people find that they've like these movies, often they'll report that they feel better.
Dr. Schlozman:They feel more life affirmed afterwards, which is really interesting when you think about, you know, think about a slasher film. What is it about Halloween that would make you feel more more gathering of life rather than just like, I'm just gonna give up because there's this guy walking around. Halloween's a great example of actually a movie that has been not great for psychiatry too. So I often will issue a caveat when people ask me about these movies. Mean, Halloween is a horrible depiction of mental illness.
Dr. Schlozman:Like, false, inappropriate, the psychiatrist is a moth. Like, everyone's bad in that from a psychiatric perspective. Doesn't make the movie a bad movie, and I and I think introducing that nuance to people, like, saying, you can watch this, but you better understand that this part is not accurate.
Mary:And let's dive into that a little bit, the history of sort of mental illness being portrayed as scary or frightening, in pop culture. How can those different portrayals maybe lead to stigma, and what happens when we begin to see the person behind the so called monster?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. It's a great it's a great point. First of all, I wanna be clear. It appears, at least based on some of the media research and certainly under... Based on anecdotal evidence, that that's changing.
Dr. Schlozman:So there's still mental illness being portrayed in movies, in TV shows, horror and otherwise, but it's much less stigmatized in that way. It's much more, nuanced. It's much more just broad. They're not just so unidimensional. And and that's been really, really good for psychiatry, that that lowering of stigma.
Dr. Schlozman:It might be actually why our wait lists are so long. One of the reasons because people are... As the stigma goes down, people are willing to to seek care more often. But having said that, it is still... Remember, the people who make these stories, their job isn't to destigmatize mental health.
Dr. Schlozman:Their job is to sell their stories so they can get ad revenue or whatever, bring people into the theaters. So sometimes they'll they'll trip into a storyline, something with, say, dissociative identity disorder. That's one that comes up again and again and again all the way back to primal fear and and going forward. It's a horrible depiction of what it means to to kind of dissociate and take on different personalities. We could argue about whether that's a real syndrome or not.
Dr. Schlozman:That's a different argument. This is a bad... Nobody looks like the people in these in these movies look like. Hannibal Lecter is another great example. Right?
Dr. Schlozman:He's not dissociative identity disorder, but just as a a misuse of the the knowledge of mental health. Hannibal Lecter is a psychiatrist in silence of the lambs, and he has this uncanny ability to know exactly what people are thinking. And that's actually the... That's the, you know, the stereotype that dogs, people who practice psychiatry and psychology more than anything else, people just assume we know what they're... They get it.
Dr. Schlozman:Of course, we don't. We have to ask them, and tell us these questions. But, boy, it's a great it's a great narrative technique for the story. So I appreciate Hannibal Lecter even as I know that there is no Hannibal Lecter.
Mary:And are there any films or books where really they get it right? There's a mental health condition that's portrayed, and it's surprisingly accurate?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. Yeah. There's a ton of them. It's hard not to think of silver lining playbook. In it, Bradley Cooper plays a young man who has bipolar disorder.
Dr. Schlozman:They never even say, really. At one point, they do kind of say that he has bipolar disorder, but it's not a big feature. But certainly, his behavior is extremely consistent with it. Interestingly, he's also dangerous in this. So it's not that they shy away from the possibility of danger that can sometimes come with some of these diagnoses.
Dr. Schlozman:Again, I wanna be clear. Most people with psychiatric diagnoses, the vast majority are not dangerous at all. In fact, they have bad things happen to them as a function of their syndrome, not not the other way around. But the neat kind of slide of hand that Solar Living Playbook did is that they are very accurate about the syndrome. You have empathy for Bradley Cooper's character.
Dr. Schlozman:He's funny. He's charming. He also is a busy, sick guy, needs to take his medicines. And when he doesn't take his medicines, he does things that he would later absolutely regret. And then there's a side plot in that of Jennifer Lawrence's character who has something because she has this big talk with him in in a dinner table about the medicines that they're on.
Dr. Schlozman:It's not even clear what diagnosis she has. You don't... That's not part of the storyline. But she's portrayed again as a patient who sees a psychiatrist who's also admirable and likable. That's, I think, the way most people are.
Mary:Yeah. Do you think that's sort of valuable to not even name the mental health challenge that they're dealing with, but more just learning about the character and the backstory and the narrative?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. No. I mean, that's a... Thank you for that question. Here's why it strikes me as such an important question.
Dr. Schlozman:I worry that in the medical world, as we adopt, you know, more electronic medical records, drop down menus, checking things off, that we put all of our focus on the diagnosis, which is fine. We should have a diagnosis that helps us to know what we're treating, what's going to respond to treatment, what our prognosis is, but we forget the story, And the story is where the person becomes an individual. Like depression is depression is depression in the DSM, but my depression is going to be really different than your depression and different than somebody else's depression. So the thing that makes it different are the stories, And that's what we have to remember to take the time to do. And increasingly, I think we have to remind our trainees...
Dr. Schlozman:Mean, they're all great at it, but we gotta remind them that this is the job. The job is not checking off the boxes. The job is to get their story.
Mary:And so different than, you know, the the medical world of broken bones or things that are just, you know, an obvious symptoms that, you know, are fixed or remedied in the typical way. Is that one of the differences with psychiatry?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah, I think so. So I think there's actually more nuanced stories even with a broken bone, because there's a story behind every broken bone. Patient presents to the ER having fallen off their motorcycle and broke their arm, let's say, there's a story behind that. There's a story about how they took the turn, whether they hit gravel, what their thoughts were when they broke their arm. Does their ability to tell that story help them to feel better about that broken arm?
Dr. Schlozman:Would it make a difference if they get to tell that story or if they don't? I I don't know. That... I still... I've had a a couple of very severe brushes with scary illnesses.
Dr. Schlozman:I had an intracranial bleed while I was skiing, which I've talked about publicly. I'm totally fine now, but it was very, very scary. The fact that the people in the emergency room asked me questions about what I remembered. Is my daughter okay? How is she...
Dr. Schlozman:Like like, who are you? Where are you from? What is your place in this presentation of having an intracranial bleed? That helped me to have more resiliency. I'm pretty sure.
Dr. Schlozman:I don't know how to measure it yet, but I can't I can't imagine a patient who doesn't want the opportunity to tell you how they got where they got. They might not wanna talk about it in-depth that they gotta go set their arm, but they wanna talk about it at some point.
Mary:Yeah. That seems to make a lot of sense because, you know, anyone walking around with a cast or a sling, they're asked probably 50 times a day, what happened? And it does seem like that person is like, oh, you know, I fell off the horse. Or, you know, they kind of like to tell and share that story with anyone who might ask.
Dr. Schlozman:Yep. Yep. And, you know, sometimes I'll ask people, what do you wish had happened? Like, you broke your arm. Like, let's say you didn't, you know, slip in the ice when you were going to, I don't know, take the trash out.
Dr. Schlozman:But instead you were fighting off, you know, a wildcat that came to your house. Like, what's the story you would tell? I do that more with with littler kids, but people usually have the thing that happened and then the thing they wish had happened.
Mary:Right. That makes them sound a little cooler.
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. Yeah. This is why it's really hard for me to stick to the allotted time with my patients. Right. There's always stories to be told.
Mary:And is telling an accurate story, is that important when it comes to mental health, or do people give you these sort of alternative stories that they wish would happen? Such
Dr. Schlozman:a neat quest... Such a shrinky question. I don't know. Like like, I would rather have them tell me the story as they recall it, and then that becomes the reality in in the office. And then over time, that story is probably gonna come back.
Dr. Schlozman:You're gonna hear more of it because if it's something important enough to bring up in the office, it's likely to come back in again at further times, and they might they might change it up a little bit. And then the worst thing you can do is say, I thought what you told me the first time, were you lying? You're not gonna say that, but you might say, you know, I think when you first told me this, you said this. Like, it sounds like it's maybe changed. Do you remember something different?
Dr. Schlozman:You're sort of giving them the opportunity to put the story into some kind of narrative cohesive context. I mean, that's... The definition of trauma is something happens to you when it's garbled. Your brain garbles it because your your memory can't quite make sense of the events, and things get out of place. It's it's that lack of narrative context.
Dr. Schlozman:So giving people the opportunity to put things into some sort of cohesive context to give it meaning helps.
Mary:And so it's okay for people's stories to sort of evolve or change over the course of working with you?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hope so. Otherwise, we're not working.
Mary:What amount of keeping the patient in mind is ideal in the medical context? Like with a surgeon, for example, who has to cut into you, something that would not happen in another context. Isn't there some amount of expected professional dissociation that happens when medical people, look at us as bodies even when we might be in some sense dehumanizing there?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. That's a really neat question. I think that's the toggling that we have to do. So when you're a clinician, the diagnosis is not a very... It's a deductive exercise, but it's not a creative exercise.
Dr. Schlozman:So you toggle between the deduction of the diagnosis, because as I said, that will dictate treatment and prognosis, to the exercise of letting somebody expand into personhood, which I know sounds weird, but I think it's it's like sitting with somebody and saying, okay. You have pneumonia. What happened? Like, when when did this symptom first happen? Well, I was I was in my classroom, and I realized that I was spiking a fever, or at least they tell me it was a fever.
Dr. Schlozman:What was that like? Well, it was weird. I felt funny, and I was embarrassed because I didn't want my friends to see that I was acting funny, so I got up and left the room. How did that go? So those kinds of things, that allows you to understand what they went through.
Dr. Schlozman:This matters too because then you're sort of saying to them, you know, next time you spike a fever, maybe just get up and leave and go to the nurse rather than kinda sit with it for a bit. Or they say, gee. I'm so worried I'll have a fever again. You say, well, let me tell you what the symptoms of a fever are so that if they happen, then you go, yeah, I'd rather have you go look to someone, but you don't have to worry because these things, they're not subtle. You'll find out.
Mary:And I'm assuming, the reason why medical professionals maybe do not always take the time to get these stories is just the lack of time?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. I think that's I think that's the key. It is... It's a hard job. So the main reason is lack of time.
Dr. Schlozman:The other reason is it's... I think it's understandably protective to not put it into the the context of the story that then creates that narrative overlap with your own world, it's really scary. If you take... Like, if you see me, and I've just had a bleed in my brain, and I'm an otherwise healthy guy, I shouldn't have a bleed in my brain, there's no good reason for it, it reminds you, if you're the clinician, that bad stuff happens. And that can be scary, and you can only take so much of that in a day without, you know, going and having a cup of coffee and just getting your wits about you.
Dr. Schlozman:And, again, if time is constrained, you don't get that... Those opportunities to have that cup of coffee. That's why it's really hard to do this job alone. You gotta have other people that you go talk to, where you're not violating HIPAA or anything like that. But just like, I gotta tell you, it's not like I need help with this case.
Dr. Schlozman:It's more I just need to talk to you about it.
Mary:And that's sort of what you encourage other professionals to do after hearing something that really shakes them is to take a moment in community?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. And, you know, people worry that it's gonna take a lot of time. It actually doesn't take that much time to... I mean, that's why we train. That's why we go to school, all that...
Dr. Schlozman:Those things. It doesn't take, like, all day. If it does take all day, then you have a different kind of issue you gotta you gotta work on. But it takes a little bit of time. You owe it to yourself, and importantly, you owe it to your next patient to get your wits about you before you go do it.
Dr. Schlozman:That's why we don't often schedule back to back. We'll take five, ten minutes in between.
Mary:And back to the horror of it all. You mentioned, both people who love and hate it are having similar deep emotional reactions to the story, the characters, the themes. But what's the difference that makes someone fall on either side of that? I'm not a huge horror person. I think I was scarred from that first experience.
Dr. Schlozman:Nobody knows for sure. It's a little bit like, well, you don't have to go see another one. So it's not gonna cause a trouble for you. If you happen to, let's say, marry somebody who's a world famous horror director or something like that, and then you always have to hear about it, then maybe it becomes a problem. So it's less of a problem if you don't particularly like horror films, and that means that the papers come from market research as opposed to from, like, medical research.
Dr. Schlozman:But according to the market research, it looks like people don't engage in that metacognition that I talked about. So in... This is actually a couple of studies where they grabbed people who came out of horror films who were naive to a horror film. They'd never seen one before. They had increased autonomic symptoms, heart...
Dr. Schlozman:You know, heartbeat, blood pressure, skin conductance. And then they said, did you like it? Did you like it? Some said yes. Some said no.
Dr. Schlozman:They divided them up. And among the folks who said no versus the ones who said yes, the nos didn't think about why it scared them. They just decided they were scared and they were done. Whereas it looks like the yeses were much more willing to interrogate it, to kind of think out loud about it. This is not like a a value thing.
Dr. Schlozman:It's not like all the no's people weren't gonna ask questions. That... The market people would love that. Right? Because they want more people to go to to the movies.
Dr. Schlozman:The other reasons that that are often talked about are sensation seeking. So there are people... And there's a little bit of evidence that, say, lower serotonin metabolites in the CSF of of, people who, say, like roller coasters or enjoy White River kayaking or things that take a little bit of risk or maybe a lot of risk, they're more likely to like horror films. But there are huge exceptions that you could have somebody who's... Don't know.
Dr. Schlozman:I I met somebody who loves... Who's a tree guy who puts the spikes on his shoes and goes up, you know, a million feet in air. That would scare me to death, but this guy will not watch a scary movie. Like like Funny. He's like, I'm done.
Dr. Schlozman:Eyes. He covers his eyes and and walks out. So there are exceptions to that too.
Mary:Yeah. I don't know if you've read any research on true crime. That's something that I am really into, and I think there's a similar thing of, like, if I learn about this, then I'll know how to be better prepared, or it won't happen to me. Is there something that you can make sense of with true crime?
Dr. Schlozman:It's such an interesting question. There's... People are starting to be interested in it in part because it's such a huge market phenomena, you know, podcasts, TV shows, even trials. So I know that there's evidence that people who enjoy true crime actually become calmer. They become more relaxed, and that's similar to the evidence that suggests that people who watch horror films and enjoy them are actually a little bit even though they're frightened at the time, they're a little bit calmer afterwards.
Dr. Schlozman:But I suspect that what you're saying is is also the case, which is there's a sense of mastery. Right? Like, these things are out there. They happen. And if I can study this, then I can start to have a better sense of what's gonna happen potentially, hopefully never.
Dr. Schlozman:But if it does happen to me, I'll know, and I can head it off.
Mary:It seems like it is popular too among people like me, like women in a certain age range. I wonder if that's just tend to be the victims of crime or who knows?
Dr. Schlozman:I think so. I mean, statistically, that's certainly the case. So the... And I've noticed that too. It is much more common.
Dr. Schlozman:It's interesting. You've got me thinking, which I hadn't thought of this before. I know that mysteries are more commonly enjoyed by women too, like mystery fiction. There are mystery bookstores. Going going back, you know, to the turn of the last century, eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds, like, people love their mysteries, and that happens more often in women.
Dr. Schlozman:And I wonder if that's the increased vulnerability that that women feel. I don't know.
Mary:Yeah. Very interesting. Are there kinds of human stories that horror as a genre is uniquely able to tell?
Dr. Schlozman:I think the neat thing about horror is... So if we look at... Science fiction is usually somebody extraordinary doing an extraordinary thing, whereas horror is very typically somebody typical having something extraordinary happen to them. It might be bad, might be amazed, might be scary, might be awesome in that it's awesome, inspiring, not like awesome, wow, this is great. So I think what it what it does is it it shows the typical person, whatever that could be, what happens to them when they're thrust into extraordinary circumstances.
Dr. Schlozman:You know, you could say that it's an extraordinary circumstance to sit in a traffic jam too, but that's not something that's actually gonna rid your attention. So it's it's more like how do they solve this problem? And almost always the problems that they solve in this extraordinary circumstance are problems that are familiar to us even though it's extraordinary. It's it's never about the monster. It's about the interpersonal relationships that get tried and and kind of challenged when the monster's out there.
Dr. Schlozman:And so if they could just pay attention to those, like, to not fracture among each other, then they'll better be able to handle the threat that's more external.
Mary:When you said familiarity, I was thinking of... There's just familiar things it seems that are in all horror movies that have us screaming on the couch like, Why aren't you just getting in the car and driving away? Why are you going in the dark shed, with no flashlight?
Dr. Schlozman:Well, it was even, since you brought it up, there's even setups where you... Where there's something so completely absurd, and and you're like, what what are they? In the conjuring, I don't know if you've seen that movie. It's it's it's a great film, but it's very scary. There's a scene where he discovers a hidden tunnel in the closet.
Dr. Schlozman:So so first of you find... You're in the house that you moved into the big scary mansion. You've seen this a zillion times. Right? The big scary mansion never should have bought out.
Dr. Schlozman:It was available at a really cheap price. He's do it yourself, guys. He's gonna put it back together himself. He finds the tunnel. He decides, first of all, he's gonna go explore it.
Dr. Schlozman:That's enough.
Mary:Right? Course.
Dr. Schlozman:Here, it's like, what are you doing? But then he... He's a trucker. He's a truck driver in the seventies in the movie. So he has tools like flashlights, but instead he lights a match, and he goes down there with a little plane down the stairs.
Dr. Schlozman:And you know... You just know someone's gonna blow out that that match. It's some other thing that's down in the basement is gonna do it. So in in those moments, those typical... You you go from very typical to extremely atypical.
Dr. Schlozman:We've all heard something we thought was in the house. Maybe we got scared enough to look in the closet. That's all... We've we've been there. We can imagine that.
Dr. Schlozman:But you find the tunnel in your house? Are you really, really gonna go down there? If you are, you're not gonna get a flashlight and at least a crowbar? You're gonna go down with a match? That's where the where the movies just sort of take a right turn, and then you can start laughing because because you kind of enjoy.
Dr. Schlozman:Those typical things, they all... The atypical extraordinary things all come out of a typical moment. As, you know, kid walking home from school, I'm thinking of Halloween, a doll. Right? Like, what could be more normal than a doll?
Dr. Schlozman:You had a doll in a horror film. It's like Chekhov's gun. Right? Like, you see a doll, something's gonna happen.
Mary:There is that comedic side of things. Do you think there is sort of like a razor thin line between horror and comedy? And does laughing help us deal with fear?
Dr. Schlozman:Yeah. So laugh... Second question first. All sorts of evidence that if you can... You don't wanna laugh inappropriately.
Dr. Schlozman:In other words, if you're busy laughing and then the axe murderers chase you, you should probably run rather than laugh even if it looks silly. But it is clear that if you can find humor in the circumstance, you'll actually deal with the threat more efficiently and and more effectively. And at the same time, if you can put humor into these films, people are much more likely to feel led to the film. There's not a moment of laughter in it. It can't be forced, but there are understandably, know, you're gonna go out there?
Dr. Schlozman:Oh, it's better than staying in here. Those kinds of lines that actually kind of make you laugh a little bit because you were like, you're right. They're stuck. Like, he either goes out there and faces the monster out there or he stays in the house, and he faces the monster into the house. But one way or the other, something's happen.
Mary:Is there any difference between the different types of media, whether it be a haunted house where you're walking through physically or movies, books, comics, ghost stories around the campfire. Is it all getting at the same thing?
Dr. Schlozman:I think they're all getting at the same thing, but they all have understandable differences in the way one experiences them. Most wanted houses don't have a complete narrative arc to them. I mean, sometimes they do. You go in, and you can sort of see the story developing that there's, I don't know, a few, you know, fake intestines here, and then there's an axe over here with fake blood. You see, you can sort of start to put the story together that inside is somebody that was wielding or is still wielding the axe.
Dr. Schlozman:Comics have obviously a more visual experience than them. They're also available to younger audiences because it's easier to read comics, even though there's plenty of comics that are written entirely for adults. And then movies, I think, are... Right now, although this will change soon, but right now, I think they're the most available and the most immersive form of horror entertainment. You really feel like you're in the story.
Dr. Schlozman:The reason I said this will change is that there is this burgeoning technology of artificial intelligence and even more so virtual reality. So the ability to create a story that works in real time with what you're experiencing and then adding in different features based on what your response is to certain features. So your heart rate goes up when you see a monster out of the left side of your VR headset. The machine recognizes that your heart rate's gone up, so now it's gonna give you something else from the left side and sort of teach you that the left side is where something scary is gonna happen. But then something comes in out of the right side, so you can create these storylines.
Dr. Schlozman:I I did get my... The book that I wrote has also been optioned for a a VR miniseries, which we wrote. It never got made, but it taught me a lot about how these virtual reality storytelling techniques are gonna develop. And once that technology is more readily available, it's gonna be a very strange experience, I think, for a lot of people. That that was really bad, but it'll be different.
Dr. Schlozman:It's not the past experience of the movie.
Mary:So this is really the future of horror is possibly really being immersed in that horror film.
Dr. Schlozman:It's a a future. I'm not sure I... I don't know if I'll like it. I didn't even like it when I was writing it. Like, the idea of having something kind of...
Dr. Schlozman:You would hear... Like, you put on the VR headset and you put in the headphones, so you make a noise this way, and then you have the noise getting closer and closer off to your left, getting closer and closer to your head. And then you look, and there's something called apex view. So it's right in your face, and then you turn, and it's right there. And then if you move your head away, there might be some...
Dr. Schlozman:Something over on the right side, so you can't escape it. I'm not sure that's so great. The great thing about going to a movie is you can close your eyes.
Mary:And that sort of brings me to how horror has changed over time from Frankenstein, Edgar Allan Poe, old stories and myths, to possibly virtual reality here. How has that changed?
Dr. Schlozman:So I I think that... This is where I get a little, I guess, philosophical. I think it'll still stick with what's familiar. It'll change in the way you have the experience, but the familiarity of the storylines, if it's a completely foreign experience, It's hard to know what to be afraid of. So they'll play with the notion of the uncanny.
Dr. Schlozman:Right? Like, it'll be familiar enough to you, but a little bit off that you find yourself drawn to it, and it'll always be relevant to the times that it's in. So look look at the two huge blockbusters this summer. Backrooms, one, you know, basically was born online from a 20... He's 22 years old.
Dr. Schlozman:The guy who made that movie Made made zillions of dollars. Huge movie and even more obsession. That guy was 26. Literally, first time major filmmaker. He's made one other film before that, but nothing like this.
Dr. Schlozman:That's the... That's a movie that made sense to people. We've all been obsessed at, you know, when we're young adults with with somebody that we find ourselves having a crush on. And what that movie pointed out is that when you're obsessed with someone that you don't really know, then that person becomes a projection of what you want them to be. And that's that's what that movie plays with.
Dr. Schlozman:It's such a good film, but it is so uncomfortable.
Mary:I'll have to watch that. So like I mentioned, I'm not a huge horror person. Does that mean I'm missing out on something in my life? Should I start watching more horror films? Will it be good for me?
Dr. Schlozman:I don't... I I would never prescribe anything like that. You can you can certainly try them out, and and there's enough. You can look at, webs... Common Sense Media is not a bad website that tells you what...
Dr. Schlozman:You know, what's out there and how it's out there. So you can certainly try them out, but I don't think you're necessarily missing out. There are there are tons of ways to explore in displacement some of our our hopes, fears, you know, concerns, desires. That... That's what narrative really is.
Dr. Schlozman:It doesn't have to be in a horror genre. It can be rom com, drama, spy, whatever. And I I like all stories. It's just the first novel I wrote was a horror novel, and so everybody thought you're a horror guy, so I just leaned into it. If
Mary:you could recommend a horror film right now... You mentioned Obsession. Is there one that you think that our listeners should go out and watch or a story they should read right now?
Dr. Schlozman:I should issue a warning around Obsession. There is a very unsettling scene in it. So Obsession, I'm giving a trigger warning. Backrooms, if you're claustrophobic, another trigger warning there. I'm trying...
Dr. Schlozman:I'm so reluctant to recommend a horror film because everybody has their own tastes. I really like It Follows, which came out about maybe a decade ago. I love The Babadook, if anybody has seen that, because it's a great reference of the challenges in having a very challenging younger child in that movie. It's really about motherhood and trauma, and it's a brilliant film.
Mary:It sounds like I could relate to that one.
Dr. Schlozman:You could. I don't think you... I mean, it's a scary movie, but but it's also such a touching movie. It's so moving, and it actually resolves in a kind of uplifting way, which you don't see coming, that it's worth watching.
Mary:Well, Doctor. Schlossman, this has been so interesting. Thank you so much for your time and for chatting with me.
Dr. Schlozman:Well, it's my pleasure. Thanks for for having me.
Mary:Of course. Thank you so much to Doctor. Schlossman. That was such a fun discussion about horror.
Kurt:What a great, conversation that was, but it's left me with one question here, which is when are you gonna watch a horror movie?
Mary:I'm really going to try. Okay? It's tough for me these days watching any sort of TV with the kids and especially one that's not safe for children to watch. Mhmm. So I'll have to make sure everyone is tucked in bed.
Mary:And
Kurt:I think I think one of these psychological horror thrillers might be might be really good, like a a Get Out or or a Babadook or one of those. I'd I'd like to see the the the livestream of your reactions to that. Maybe it'll be a special live episode of Unravelling coming soon.
Mary:Yes. I'll have to make sure that I've queued up a happy podcast or something to listen to after so I can fall asleep, but I will do it.
Kurt:That's right. Listeners, write in if you wanna hear the livestream of that. 802-2583 or unravel@brattlebororetreat.org.
Mary:We hope you have a great, spooky season wherever you're listening from.
Kurt:That's right. Stay safe from the, living and the undead.
Mary:We'll see you next time.
Kurt:Unravelling is brought to you by Brattleboro Retreat. Our producers at Charts and Leisure are Andrew Adkin, Hans Buteau, and Jason Oberholzer.
Mary:And you can find us on social media by searching Brattleboro Retreat. Bratteboro Retreat is committed to exploring diverse perspectives on mental health. While we invite hosts and guests to share their insights, the views expressed are their own and do not necessarily reflect the policies or positions of the hospital or its staff.