恐懼蔓延——香港鬼故事的格式塔心理學分析

Passing Down the Terror–Analyzing Hong Kong Ghost Stories in Gestalt Psychological Perspective

恐怖故事有令人著迷的特性－既引起驚恐的情緒，又使人一而再地閱讀。華文學界中鮮有對其特性進行探討的研究。有鑑及此，本文旨在從讀者心理和情緒的角度，去探討恐怖故事吸引人的特質，以補學界空白之處。本文先回顧了卡羅爾對於恐怖故事的分析，並帶出他對於此「恐怖悖論」的反思。在應用卡羅爾的理論之同時，本文發現讀者背後的心理反應可以運用格式塔心理學的理論進行解釋。借用考夫卡「行為環境－地理環境」的理論作分析，口耳相傳的鬼故事之敘事方式衝擊著讀者們的行為環境而引發恐懼感。更有趣的是，故事往往以「未完之事」作結束。按勒溫等人研究所得，這種結束令讀者對故事留下更深刻印象，將故事所引起的恐懼感在現實生活中延續。 Horror stories have a fascinating character - it can arouse fear of people, but also it attracts people because of so. Fear is a negative emotion, like disgust, anxiety and depression. We will not intentionally make ourselves feel disgusted, but we will pay money to buy horror stories. It is an interesting phenomenon worth studying; however, little attention was paid in Chinese academia about why horror stories are so fascinating and how they attract the readers. This article is divided into mainly two parts. Firstly, by applying No?l Carroll's explanation of ''Paradox of Horror'' we can find that most of the horror stories we come across easily fit his explanation. However, maybe because Carroll's researches are heavily based on classics in horror stories, we discover that his explanation has limitation in studying the ghost stories in popular culture. The second part of this article uses theories from Gestalt psychology to explain why such ghost stories can induce so much fear among the readers. Also, this article discovers that ghost stories in popular culture usually have left an unfinished event in their endings. Ending the stories in this way seems to create a psychological response: ''spreading the horror in reality''. This response is validated by the findings from a survey.