There is a psychological mechanism that isn’t very well known yet is involved behind the scenes in many emotions. It plays a part in disgust, revulsion, repugnance, aversion, distaste, nausea, abhorrence, loathing, detestation, horror, contempt, weird, outrage, terror, fear, fright, panic, dread, trepidation, hatred, hate, abomination, execration, odium, antipathy, dislike, hostility, animosity, ill feeling, bad feeling, malice, animus, enmity, aversion, shame, humiliation, mortification, chagrin, ignominy, embarrassment, indignity, discomfort and repugnance, among others. Really, just about any negative emotion has this mechanism involved. But how could she forget phlegm and bile? Someone needs to read her Burton. Whenever I see that stuff I'm like Eeyw that is seriously cited in Dryden, Ussher and Perz, "Young women's construction of their post-cancer fertility" (2014), p. 1343. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection ( French: Pouvoirs de l'horreur. Essai sur l'abjection) is a 1980 book by Julia Kristeva. The work is an extensive treatise on the subject of abjection, [1] in which Kristeva draws on the theories of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan to examine horror, marginalization, castration, the phallic signifier, the "I/Not I" dichotomy, the Oedipal complex, exile, and other concepts appropriate to feminist criticism and queer theory. Abjection theory, particularly in regard to horror studies, has been a useful tool for reframing the ways in which we view the female body in the genre. As Xavier Aldana Reyes highlights in Horror Film and Affect: Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership (2016),

Foucault, Michel. 2000. “Different Spaces” (1967). In Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 2. Trans. Robert Hurley, edited by James Faubion. London: Penguin, 175–86.What is this mysterious power behind the curtain of so many intense, uncomfortable emotions? It’s called abjection. It is the subject of Julia Kristeva's book, The Powers of Horror. Abjection is what happens when there is a breakdown of the distinction between self and other. It’s necessary for your development into an independent, functioning human being.

Frances, J. (2014). "Damaged or unusual bodies: Staring, or seeing and feeling". Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy. 4 (9): 198–210. doi: 10.1080/17432979.2014.931887. Religion, according to Kristevea, is a natural response to the abject, for if one truly experiences the abject, they are prone to engage in all manners of perverse and anti-social behaviors. Therefore, religion creates a sort of buffer between one's mind and the abject and further represses them. She later turns to the work of Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and the publication of 'Journey to the End of the Night' as an almost ideal example of the purgative, artistic expression of the abject. Sartre, Jean-Paul, Saint Genet (1952) (Note: Jean Genet wrote a journal in which abjection was an important theme) Sens et non sens de la révolte, Fayard, Paris, 1996 (trans. The Sense of Revolt, Columbia University Press, 2000)When you know about abjection, it’s not hard to find yourself abjecting all over the place. Think about any part of yourself you would really rather not have. Let’s say you hate your big, soft belly. If you could just cut it off and remove it, you would; but what you settle on doing is exercising and trying to eat right, but mostly just hating it. Of course, you will not only hate your belly, you’re going to hate other people’s big bellies, too. The person you’re going to hate the most, and be the most abjected by, is going to be that big, fat person, eating an ice cream cone, waddling down the street. You’re going to think that person is disgusting. What are you disgusted by? You’re looking at an abjected version of yourself. Les Samouraïs, Fayard, Paris, 1990 (trans. The Samurai: A Novel, Columbia University Press, New York, 1992) Le Vieil homme et les loups, Fayard, Paris, 1991(trans. The Old Man and the Wolves, Columbia University Press, New York, 1994) Kristeva, J. (1982 [2018]) Excerpts from Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (1982) in Classic Readings on Monster Theory. Mittman & Hensel. Available at: https://www.perlego.com/book/1459197/classic-readings-on-monster-theory-demonstrare-volume-one-pdf State University of New York at Stony Brook". Archived from the original on 2004-11-20 . Retrieved 2004-11-23.

To continue inscribing overdetermined binary significations of difference on human bodies and to assume these differences to be innate, self-evident, and unimpeachable is to both identify and produce a multiplicity of abjected Others — “outsiders” to the exclusionary matrix who are then left vulnerable to the horrors of stereotyping, oppression, and violence. (2014) Bulgaria’s Dossier Commission posts Julia Kristeva files online″, The Sofia Globe, 30 March 2018. Retrieved 30 March 2018. This pull towards the womb is another psychological mechanism, but we won’t get into that now. That’s a whole other can of worms that will require at least another post to explain.When I was about five, my parents took me on a trip to New York City. We did all the usual tourist things, but what I remember best was my first sight of a man with a missing leg, struggling to get through the subway turnstile. I had nightmares of that image afterwards. I had never seen an amputee before and I was horrified in the same way you might be if you slowed down to look at an accident. Yes, you’re right; I was abjecting. vous appelez ça du ‘Nietchevo’ n’est-ce pas? » Mises en scène de la langue « étrangère » chez Irène Némirovsky.” In Évelyne Enderlein and Lidiya Mihova (eds.), Écrire ailleurs au féminin dans le monde slave au XX e siècle. Paris: L’Harmattan, 55–84. In other words, the child learns at a primal level about their own body, including what is ‘clean and proper’. When childbirth occurs and the child leaves the womb (Kristeva refers to the womb as ‘the chora’), they enter the symbolic, patriarchal world of language and culture. As the child enters this world, they begin to associate the maternal, semiotic stage with shame and revulsion. Book Genre: Art, Criticism, Essays, Feminism, Horror, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Theory, Writing How does this work with the belly? Instead of making your belly an abjected belly, one you’re ashamed of; make it a respected one. It’s not your belly’s fault it’s big; it’s just doing what bellies do. Appreciate it for its ability to expand to contain everything you put in it. That’ll go down as easy as spit, but it’s true; your belly is a wonderous thing. When you learn to cherish your belly, maybe you’ll learn to take better care of it; maybe not. The point is, you don’t have to hate your belly for it to get smaller. You just have to eat less.