Types of Phobias Essay Example for Free

Types of Phobias Essay Our psychics still stands very far away from the complete understanding of the processes that take place inside our mind. One of the striking evidences for this statement is the widest variety of fears that quite often enthrall people, and what is more, there are no easy ways to find any reasonable explanation to expand their origin. However, this problem is widely discussed in psychology and there is a special term to denote strong fear, aversion or terror, phobia. Anyone can be affected by phobia – even celebrities such as Nicole Kidman who is afraid of butterflies, Johnny Depp who is terrified of clowns, and Christina Ricci who is scared of sharks in the swimming pool. In this essay we shall describe a number of different instances of phobia and illustrate that generally they can be divided into to types, namely those which fall under rational explanation and respectively those which are based on deep psychological roots and defy any rational interpretation or explanation. Exactly the complexity and even sometimes impossibility to explain certain phobias, together with the need to apply an individual approach to examine each such case allows us to assert that our psyche and mental activity still is full of uncountable mysteries. Hundred thousands or even millions of people all over the world suffer from acrophobia or in other words the fear of heights. Basing on evidences and psychological studies this is likely to be the most spread form of phobias. Many of us have met people who feel petrified staying on an absolutely safe balcony of the skyscraper. So these are the apparent victims of acrophobia. There is little or no distinction between this kind of phobia and bathophobia, fear of depths; both involve fear of falling. The both forms of phobia have a simple rational explanation. Height and depth contain certain potential danger for a person. What helps realize this danger is person’s instinct for self-preservation, which compels a person to leave potentially dangerous place. However, in some cases the instinct for self-preservation transforms into exceptionally acute form, known to us as phobia. Another instance of phobia is arachnophobia or fear of spiders. Unlike the phobias discussed above this kind of fear is not related to the possible danger for life and cannot be explained by any reasonable means. To understand this phobia nature let us illustrate the particular case described in the newspaper Daily Record. Carol-Ann Swanson has been scared of spiders since she was a girl. At the age of 29 she admitted her tendency to scream and run away from anything that looked remotely like a spider and understood it was not quiet a normal thing for a psychiatry worker, so she decided to find the reasons for her fears. The psychoanalysis brought her back to her childhood when Ann’s older brother used to get her to close her eyes put a spider in her outstretched hand. Later that fear became a firm phobia in primary school. The teacher found out she was scared so she put a poster of a huge spider on the wall and asked her to touch it. The whole class discussed her fear, so it made her feel really embarrassed. Even the pom-pom spiders that hung from the classroom ceiling were terrifying. Thus we can see that in this given example through thorough psychological analysis one can derive the origin and explanation of the phobia. Nevertheless, there is a huge number of phobias which cannot be so easily interpreted of studied. For instance, if a lot people do not often feel very happy when seeing a spider then arachnophobia does not seem too abnormal phenomenon. However, such phobias like ailurophobia (fear of cats), koniophobia (fear of dust), anthophobia (fear of flowers), aurophobia (fear of gold) are considerably more complicated for interpretation. The problem of phobia origin still contains a lot of undiscovered facets. Among them the specialists (Kleinknecht R.) underline the following: Why some people at certain circumstances suffer from phobia and others do not? Why a person cannot overcome his or her phobia by the understanding that this fear is groundless? Are there any universal methods applicable to all people suffering from phobia? While there are no direct answers to these questions there is a strong need to apply individual approach to study each particular instance of phobia. The difficulty and sometimes even the helplessness in dealing with phobia gives the grounds for claim that our mind and mental processes occurring there still present a lot of riddles to be solved. References: Kleinknecht, Ronald A. Mastering Anxiety: The Nature and Treatment of Anxious Conditions. New York: Insight Books, 1991. Does This Tarantula Scare You? Amazing irrational fears that plague so many terrified victims; The like Carol-Ann You Are One of 50,000 Scots with a Phobia. Lifestyle Coach Alastair Campbell Helps Her Face Her Demons. Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) 2 Mar. 2005. Biography.ms. Retrieved on 22 Jan. 2006 from http://www.biography.ms/List_of_phobias.html