Powers of Horror: an Essay on Abjection is a 1982 book by Julia Kristeva. The book is an extensive treatise on the subject of abjection and all it entails. Starting with Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan's theories, Kristeva examines 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.