ABSTRACT
For 12 years the author has worked with the disordered lives of many human beings. Both in institutional settings as well as in his private practice, the author has seen individuals meet their own “monsters” and face the parts of themselves with which they found their own terrors, their own “hells on earth.” John himself had to face feeling intense terror. He used the experience of terror in himself as an empathic tool to help others. In this article the author recounts his own journey into the subject of terror, tells a few “tales of terror” and ends with some theoretical suggestions about the nature of “terror” and its treatment.
