“Emotion displacement“: replace negative emotions with raw terror or horror instead! The theory behind “chainsaw maniac therapy.”

Background:

Various states of mind, like anxiety, general stress, ennui, are relatively “high level,” and are not immediately related to fight-or-flight survival.

Thus, there is a possibility of them being displaced by “higher priority” emotions: e.g. if you’re falling off the top of a skyscraper with only a pool umbrella to use to possibly survive, it’s unlikely that you’re going to worry about the long-term impacts of ocean acidification in that exact moment.

Proposal:

This suggests a possible method of “horror therapy,” by which one temporarily displaces negative feelings by replacing them with a truly horrific scenario as a replacement.

For example, a person who is experiencing chronic work stress could show up to a therapist’s office, sit down on a sofa, and then suddenly be confronted by a chainsaw-wielding maniac who is sawing through the door. The person’s desire to escape this seemingly-life-threatening situation is likely to make the work stress much less immediately pressing.

See Figure 1 for a highly-non-scientifically-reviewed hypothesis for how this might work:

Fig. 1: In this unsubstantiated theory of mind, the stress-causing emotions in part 1 are “displaced” by the introduction of a horror element (part 2). After the horrifying scenario is resolved, the “horror emotions” should slowly deflate, like a balloon, leaving only a perfect state of tranquility behind.

Conclusion:

Since this theory has not yet been fully tested, you should lobby to give the author of this idea a grant for, say, 500 million dollars, to found an institute to study “horror displacement” theory.

PROS: Theoretically plausible!

CONS: Success in human clinical trials has not yet been performed.