There's much more to say here, but jumping the gun a little, my sense is that, when I watch horror, the emotional experience is about loss of control and powerlessness. Jacob talks also about the "illusion of control." I.e., that any sense we have of being "in control" or controlling things, this sense is not real, not true. In fact, there are so many things which we cannot control, that for all practical purposes, we have no control. At any moment, things _could_ go completely out of our control: heart attack, earthquake, car accident, etc. There _is_ a certain amount of predictability in our experience, and we rely on this in our everyday experience, to live and survive. But predictability and control are not at all the same thing (are they?).
At the same time, it's very common for people to try and maintain a sense of control. Maybe this is a survival tactic, a way to support ourselves in an existence which we cannot control, one which we know we will inevitably lose. This has the sense of a biological/genetic agency. I can also see a learned behavior, and here's how it looks to me:
- I am very young.
- I recognize that my parents give me rewards and attention (pseudo-love) when I perform in certain ways (ways they like).
- I recognize this pseudo-love as the best love I'm going to get. I have a deep need for it. In a very real sense, there are (often) times when it's the only thing that matters to me. At these times, if I don't get the pseudo-love, I experience the most abject terror; it feels as though I will perish without the pseudo-love.
- So, I learn to perform properly, so as to get the pseudo-love as often as possible, and as predictably as possible. Among others, I learn one useful strategy which helps me perform properly: I believe that I am in control of myself and my surroundings.
- I use this strategy, of believing that I am "in control," so often, that it becomes in implicit sense of my reality. It is also tightly linked to my (also implicit) need to perform properly so that I can obtain pseudo-love. I am at the same time, learning to treat myself and others the way I am being treated, so that I give myself pseudo-love when I "perform properly."
- Because all of this is linked together, if I sense that I am losing control (becoming powerless), I start to feel horrible/terrified. Not only am I failing to perform properly, but even worse, I'm losing the agency and context which _allows_ me to perform properly in the first place. I'm losing the most fundamental strategy which I use to get pseudo-love. As an adult, I am losing my deepest sense of self-love, self-worth . . . I am spiraling into utter shame, and (at least to some extent) my sense of who I am is collapsing.
