Animal phobias, phobias of inanimate objects, and illness and injury phobias
The Specific Phobias
There are three classes of specific phobias: animal phobias, phobias of inanimate objects, and illness and injury phobias. The first of these, animal phobias, such as Anna's cat phobia, contrasts with agoraphobia.
Animal phobias uniformly begin in early childhood, almost never beginning after
puberty. While common in childhood, most animal phobias are outgrown
by adulthood.
Animal phobias are highly focused: Anna may be terrified of cats, but she
is rather fond of dogs and birds. Agoraphobic problems, in contrast, are diffuse,
ranging over a great variety of situations. Untreated animal phobias
can persist for decades with no period of remission, while untreated agoraphobia
fluctuates from remissions to relapses.
Only about 5 percent of all crippling phobias and perhaps 15 percent of
milder phobias are of specific animals. The vast majority (95 percent) of animal
phobias are reported by women; unlike agoraphobics, they are rather
healthy individuals and the phobia is apt to be their only psychological
problem.
Animal phobics sometimes can describe a specific childhood incident
that they believe set the phobia off. Anna seemed to recall that her father had
drowned a kitten. Dog phobias may begin with a dog bite; a bird phobia may
begin if a bird lands on a child's shoulder. Overall, about 60 percent of phobic
patients can describe a clear precipitating trauma. But for the remaining
40 percent, no clear incident, only vague clues extracted from the mists of
childhood memory can be isolated (Ost and Hugdahl, 1981).
One child seemed to have developed a phobia by reading about a warrior dog in a fairy
tale, and then hearing that a boy down the street had been bitten by a dog.
Another child, already somewhat apprehensive about birds, was teased
mercilessly with feathers by her playmates. In each case, there are a number
of events, often several accumulating over time, that might contribute to the
phobia. But uncovering the essential events, if such exist, can be enormously
difficult. Usually animal phobias are outgrown, but for unknown
reasons, a few remain robust and persist into adulthood.
Inanimate object phobias share many of the same characteristics as animal
phobias. Heights, closed spaces, storms, dirt, darkness, running water,
travel, and wind make up the majority of these phobias. As in animal phobias,
the symptoms are focused on one object, and the individuals are
otherwise psychologically normal. Onset is sometimes embedded in a
traumatic incident. For example, a nineteen-year-old develops an airplane
phobia after a plane he has just gotten off crashes at its next stop. An eight year-
old girl, who saw a boy hit by lightning and killed, develops a phobia of
thunder and lightning. These phobias are somewhat more common than
animal phobias, and they occur about equally in women and men. Unlike
animal phobias, they can begin at any age.
Hilda's case illustrates how a traumatic incident can bring about a phobia.
It is unusual in that the trauma occurred when she was eleven years old,
but the phobia went underground for twenty years and then reemerged
during an adult stress. The trauma, in reality, was life-threatening; the abnormal
aspect was how widely her fear generalized, showing that even a very
specific phobia can disrupt one's entire life. Hilda, a thirty-two-year-old married woman, came into therapy because of an unusual type of phobia: a fear of snow.
This phobia was her major presenting feature and had become increasingly
handicapping and troublesome. As one consequence of her husband's business
success, they had moved to the suburbs, where there was likely to be even more
snow than in the city. More travel was required-at times through snow during
wintertime-to get to the store or to any other place; and in the last several
winters, there had been a great deal of snow in her particular metropolitan area.
It is hard to picture adequately the extent off ear: this woman's fear of snow petrified her. She could not stand to go out in it; she could not stand to see it; in winter she could not listen to weather reports because someone might make some reference to snow! Any reference to snow, or even subjective thoughts about it, would make her uncomfortable, frightened, and tense. The many, many ways in which this phobia could affect her day-to-day living were almost incredible. The effects were pervasive and thereby profound.
In this instance, we were most fortunate eventually to uncover what proved to
have been the major precipitating event in the onset of the phobia. This was a
traumatic experience dating from when the patient was eleven years old. This experience had lain completely out of sight, hidden in her unconscious, for twenty-one years-repressed, but hardly dormant.
In the winter of her eleventh year, she had accompanied an aunt and an uncle to
a ski lodge in Vermont. One afternoon, she wandered off by herself, into a small
ravine that lay parallel to, but considerably below an old logging road. She played
and gradually waded her way through the snow for several hundred yards down
the ravine. Looking up at this point, she could see some people on the road far
above her. There was some banter exchanged between them. A few snowballs or
stones were thrown in her direction. A large chunk of snow either came loose or
was started toward her. To her intense horror, it quickly gathered speed and volume.
Suddenly she found herself in the path of a miniature avalanche. She was
Helpless to move out of the way in time, and was engulfed. She was literally buried
alive, and was unable to move or to extricate herself. Somehow, however, she
managed to maintain, or was fortunate enough to have, a channel so that she
could continue breathing. The people on the road above simply disappeared, either
not knowing what had transpired, or perhaps in a guilty attempt to dissociate
themselves from tragedy.
The little girl remained there, absolutely petrified with fear, for an indeterminate
period of time, until discovered through most fortuitous circumstances by her
worried uncle. It had seemed an eternity.
Her complete repression of this episode was caused by its unbearable horror,
plus her certainty of death. This may have also been encouraged a bit by her fear
of having her parents ever learn about the near tragedy. Each felt in some measure
responsible and subject to censure. Any possibility of future excursions would, in
addition, become extremely unlikely. (Adapted from Laughlin, 1967.)
Illness and injury phobias
Illness and injury phobias (nosophobias) are the final class of specific
phobias. Phobias of illness, injury, and death make up between 15 percent
and 25 percent of all phobias. A person with such a phobia fears having one
specific illness, although the kind of illness feared has changed throughout
the centuries. In the nineteenth century, nosophobics feared they had tuberculosis
or perhaps syphilis and other venereal diseases. More recently,
cancer, heart disease, and stroke have been the terrors.
A nosophobic is usually perfectly healthy, but he worries endlessly that he
may have or will soon contract a particular disease. He searches his body for
the slightest sign of the disease, and since fear itself produces symptoms like
tightness in the chest and stomach pain, he interprets these symptoms as
further evidence that the disease is upon him. And so it spirals to more
stomach or chest pain and to more certainty that he has the dreaded disease.
There are no sex differences in overall reports of nosophobia, although
cancer phobias tend to occur more in females and phobias of venereal disease almost always occur in males. Other psychological problems accompany
the disorder frequently, and it usually arises in middle age.
Nosophobics often know someone who has the feared disease.
Strangely enough, contracting the disease may cure the phobia. A man
was admitted to a hospital, beside himself with syphilophobia. After discharge,
he actually caught syphilis. The phobia disappeared at once, and the
patient happily had his syphilis cured by medical treatment (Rogerson,
1951, cited in Marks, 1969).
Nosophobia is distinguished from hypochondriasis. Hypochondriacs are
highly anxious and vigilant about a variety of illnesses in various parts of the
body, unlike the phobic who is concerned with one specific illness in one
organ. Today, hypochondriasis is not regarded as a phobia. Rather it seems
to be a feature of many different disorders, although it was originally believed
to be a discrete disorder of a nonexistent organ, the hypochondria, located
in the abdomen.
We have now described the characteristics of the various kinds of phobias.
How do phobias come about, and how can they be treated? There are
two schools of thought that present comprehensive theories about phobias:
the psychoanalytic and the behavioral. We now turn to these contrasting
theories, and then to the therapies that work successfully on phobias.
There are three classes of specific phobias: animal phobias, phobias of inanimate objects, and illness and injury phobias. The first of these, animal phobias, such as Anna's cat phobia, contrasts with agoraphobia.
Animal phobias uniformly begin in early childhood, almost never beginning after
puberty. While common in childhood, most animal phobias are outgrown
by adulthood.
Animal phobias are highly focused: Anna may be terrified of cats, but she
is rather fond of dogs and birds. Agoraphobic problems, in contrast, are diffuse,
ranging over a great variety of situations. Untreated animal phobias
can persist for decades with no period of remission, while untreated agoraphobia
fluctuates from remissions to relapses.
Only about 5 percent of all crippling phobias and perhaps 15 percent of
milder phobias are of specific animals. The vast majority (95 percent) of animal
phobias are reported by women; unlike agoraphobics, they are rather
healthy individuals and the phobia is apt to be their only psychological
problem.
Animal phobics sometimes can describe a specific childhood incident
that they believe set the phobia off. Anna seemed to recall that her father had
drowned a kitten. Dog phobias may begin with a dog bite; a bird phobia may
begin if a bird lands on a child's shoulder. Overall, about 60 percent of phobic
patients can describe a clear precipitating trauma. But for the remaining
40 percent, no clear incident, only vague clues extracted from the mists of
childhood memory can be isolated (Ost and Hugdahl, 1981).
One child seemed to have developed a phobia by reading about a warrior dog in a fairy
tale, and then hearing that a boy down the street had been bitten by a dog.
Another child, already somewhat apprehensive about birds, was teased
mercilessly with feathers by her playmates. In each case, there are a number
of events, often several accumulating over time, that might contribute to the
phobia. But uncovering the essential events, if such exist, can be enormously
difficult. Usually animal phobias are outgrown, but for unknown
reasons, a few remain robust and persist into adulthood.
Inanimate object phobias share many of the same characteristics as animal
phobias. Heights, closed spaces, storms, dirt, darkness, running water,
travel, and wind make up the majority of these phobias. As in animal phobias,
the symptoms are focused on one object, and the individuals are
otherwise psychologically normal. Onset is sometimes embedded in a
traumatic incident. For example, a nineteen-year-old develops an airplane
phobia after a plane he has just gotten off crashes at its next stop. An eight year-
old girl, who saw a boy hit by lightning and killed, develops a phobia of
thunder and lightning. These phobias are somewhat more common than
animal phobias, and they occur about equally in women and men. Unlike
animal phobias, they can begin at any age.
Hilda's case illustrates how a traumatic incident can bring about a phobia.
It is unusual in that the trauma occurred when she was eleven years old,
but the phobia went underground for twenty years and then reemerged
during an adult stress. The trauma, in reality, was life-threatening; the abnormal
aspect was how widely her fear generalized, showing that even a very
specific phobia can disrupt one's entire life. Hilda, a thirty-two-year-old married woman, came into therapy because of an unusual type of phobia: a fear of snow.
This phobia was her major presenting feature and had become increasingly
handicapping and troublesome. As one consequence of her husband's business
success, they had moved to the suburbs, where there was likely to be even more
snow than in the city. More travel was required-at times through snow during
wintertime-to get to the store or to any other place; and in the last several
winters, there had been a great deal of snow in her particular metropolitan area.
It is hard to picture adequately the extent off ear: this woman's fear of snow petrified her. She could not stand to go out in it; she could not stand to see it; in winter she could not listen to weather reports because someone might make some reference to snow! Any reference to snow, or even subjective thoughts about it, would make her uncomfortable, frightened, and tense. The many, many ways in which this phobia could affect her day-to-day living were almost incredible. The effects were pervasive and thereby profound.
In this instance, we were most fortunate eventually to uncover what proved to
have been the major precipitating event in the onset of the phobia. This was a
traumatic experience dating from when the patient was eleven years old. This experience had lain completely out of sight, hidden in her unconscious, for twenty-one years-repressed, but hardly dormant.
In the winter of her eleventh year, she had accompanied an aunt and an uncle to
a ski lodge in Vermont. One afternoon, she wandered off by herself, into a small
ravine that lay parallel to, but considerably below an old logging road. She played
and gradually waded her way through the snow for several hundred yards down
the ravine. Looking up at this point, she could see some people on the road far
above her. There was some banter exchanged between them. A few snowballs or
stones were thrown in her direction. A large chunk of snow either came loose or
was started toward her. To her intense horror, it quickly gathered speed and volume.
Suddenly she found herself in the path of a miniature avalanche. She was
Helpless to move out of the way in time, and was engulfed. She was literally buried
alive, and was unable to move or to extricate herself. Somehow, however, she
managed to maintain, or was fortunate enough to have, a channel so that she
could continue breathing. The people on the road above simply disappeared, either
not knowing what had transpired, or perhaps in a guilty attempt to dissociate
themselves from tragedy.
The little girl remained there, absolutely petrified with fear, for an indeterminate
period of time, until discovered through most fortuitous circumstances by her
worried uncle. It had seemed an eternity.
Her complete repression of this episode was caused by its unbearable horror,
plus her certainty of death. This may have also been encouraged a bit by her fear
of having her parents ever learn about the near tragedy. Each felt in some measure
responsible and subject to censure. Any possibility of future excursions would, in
addition, become extremely unlikely. (Adapted from Laughlin, 1967.)
Illness and injury phobias
Illness and injury phobias (nosophobias) are the final class of specific
phobias. Phobias of illness, injury, and death make up between 15 percent
and 25 percent of all phobias. A person with such a phobia fears having one
specific illness, although the kind of illness feared has changed throughout
the centuries. In the nineteenth century, nosophobics feared they had tuberculosis
or perhaps syphilis and other venereal diseases. More recently,
cancer, heart disease, and stroke have been the terrors.
A nosophobic is usually perfectly healthy, but he worries endlessly that he
may have or will soon contract a particular disease. He searches his body for
the slightest sign of the disease, and since fear itself produces symptoms like
tightness in the chest and stomach pain, he interprets these symptoms as
further evidence that the disease is upon him. And so it spirals to more
stomach or chest pain and to more certainty that he has the dreaded disease.
There are no sex differences in overall reports of nosophobia, although
cancer phobias tend to occur more in females and phobias of venereal disease almost always occur in males. Other psychological problems accompany
the disorder frequently, and it usually arises in middle age.
Nosophobics often know someone who has the feared disease.
Strangely enough, contracting the disease may cure the phobia. A man
was admitted to a hospital, beside himself with syphilophobia. After discharge,
he actually caught syphilis. The phobia disappeared at once, and the
patient happily had his syphilis cured by medical treatment (Rogerson,
1951, cited in Marks, 1969).
Nosophobia is distinguished from hypochondriasis. Hypochondriacs are
highly anxious and vigilant about a variety of illnesses in various parts of the
body, unlike the phobic who is concerned with one specific illness in one
organ. Today, hypochondriasis is not regarded as a phobia. Rather it seems
to be a feature of many different disorders, although it was originally believed
to be a discrete disorder of a nonexistent organ, the hypochondria, located
in the abdomen.
We have now described the characteristics of the various kinds of phobias.
How do phobias come about, and how can they be treated? There are
two schools of thought that present comprehensive theories about phobias:
the psychoanalytic and the behavioral. We now turn to these contrasting
theories, and then to the therapies that work successfully on phobias.
Treating Social Anxiety
Generalized Anxiety Treatment
Treating Panic Disorder
Agoraphobia Treatment
All other Phobias Treatment
More at:
http://social-anxiety-treatment-cure.weebly.com/
Of course you know the treatment method I recommend!
http://theliberatormethod.com/Welcome.html
END
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Generalized Anxiety Treatment
Treating Panic Disorder
Agoraphobia Treatment
All other Phobias Treatment
More at:
http://social-anxiety-treatment-cure.weebly.com/
Of course you know the treatment method I recommend!
http://theliberatormethod.com/Welcome.html
END
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~