ABSTRACT
This chapter explores disgust and the way that murder sometimes represents the extreme end of a range of responses to the feeling of disgust. The disgusting part may be split off and projected onto some other person or some other part of the self. The affect of disgust has been relatively little examined in the literature and yet it is very common in everyday life. Susan Miller attributes this to the fear of contamination that is central to disgust reactions. Disgust is an affect probably originally founded in response to bad tastes and smells with their link to spoiled food and over the ages generalised to certain tactile experiences, sliminess for example, and further extended to thoughts of something expected to be disgusting. If the perceived failing is split off and projected outwards it can produce disgust towards the object which is the recipient or, if split off and internalised, it may act as the focus for disgust with self.
