This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Why is there a phobia, gynophobia, listed for an irrational fear of women, without a corresponding phobia of men? I mean, there are obvious reasons why there is no "heterophobia" listed, but sexism goes both ways. I'm pretty sure that theres about as many people (if not more) who are irrationally afraid of men as irrationally afraid of women. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.58.252 ( talk) 00:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Maybe Its to do with men traditionally approaching women and fear of rejection, also if she's attractive guys can be stimulated causing their voice to deepen adding a fear of not being able to speak. David0288 ( talk) 20:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
The place for lists is in the article -phob- and not elsewhere... Thanks. Undead Herle King ( talk) 22:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
The article about Caligynephobia (fear of beautiful women) was also deleted last month for lack of sufficient and reliable sources. Quite a number of men, including homosexual men, seriously struggle with this condition. Caligynephobia is also called venustraphobia. -- Richontaban 17:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Just a couple of weeks ago, the article about Police Phobia was deleted for lack of sufficient and reliable sources. I understand that phobias are "irrational fears". Is it possible for anyone to be irrationally fearful or afraid of the police, or even the brutally oppressive secret police? Of course most people do not fear the police or secret police, but if the circumstances and conditions in a person's life merit so, it is possible for that person to fear the police just as much as strangers or women, or light. Astynomiaphobia ( Greek αστυνομια astynomia "police" + φοβία phobia "fear") is a sixty-seven (67) year old name for what is occasionally regarded as an irrational fear of police and law enforcement; it is not a neologism. Policophobia has been used more as informal, vulgar and humorous term; its not really a scientific term. The composer of the article should have written that there is much debate and controversy over the existence of a specific phobia for police and secret police, and that only very few psychologist have conducted original research on astynomiaphobia and that only a minority of psychologists and psychiatrists actually use the term in their respective fields. Once psychologists conduct more original research on the "specific phobia" of police, and begin publishing their findings in books and on the internet, then Wikipedia can finally carry an article about Police Phobia or Astynomiaphobia. Of course if such a specific phobia actually exists in its own right, then it would probably add to the burden of the government's prosecutors, because defendants would be able to use astynomiaphobia (fear of police) as a defense in court under certain circumstances. -- Richontaban 17:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Could we please distinguish in the article and the list between psychologically-recognized phobias (not that I think the APA is god, or anything, but they at least have a process) and political terms like 'xenophobia' and 'homophobia'? The article is already admitting a distinction in the current last sentence, 'In some cases, however, a fear or hatred is only based on ignorance', but it's not very clear. --MichaelTinkler
WHat is NIMH? --
Tarquin
What happened to the list of phobias that was once linked from this page? It now links to "-phobia" on Wiktionary, which does list some, but not very many. Wiktionary was copying the list over from Wikipedia, but now these have gone (although they can probably be recovered from the history). —
Paul G 08:41, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"Psychologists use the term phobia, which comes from the Ancient Greek word for fear (φόβος, fobos), for a number of psychological conditions that can seriously disable their carriers."
Don't understand this sentence. It can seriously disable not only the carriers of psychologists. It may even enhance their carriers if they specialize on the treatmen of phobias.
Or is this a joke?
Geraldstiehler 11:31, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
And again: It's not only psychologists using this term. Physicians and even the WHO do as well. Geraldstiehler 10:29, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Much better now! Thanks
The list of phobias is in serious need of editing by someone qualified on the subject. It's full of duplicates, ambiguities, and a few entries that might have been just a joke. ("Fear of the band CKY"? Is that for real?) It's also desperately in need of some basic alphabetizing. Could some professional please spend a few minutes cleaning this up?
Any ideas who/when first used this term in (a) medical (2) non-medical senses? In general, the history of the term usage is missing. mikka (t) 23:39, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I was surprised with negative reaction to my separation of part of this aricle into a separate one. I did this for the simple reason of disambiguation: I found it strange that the article, e.g., Homophobia links to a medical article " phobia", which could suggest that homophobia is kind of disease (which may well be the intention of those who coined the term. I am aware that the phobia article has the section "non-medical usage of the term", but it is somewhere down the flow an not ery prominent. Therefore I did what is normal in wikipedia: I performed disambiguation. And was baffled with the vote: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Phobia (attitude)
My POV is very simple: the two usages are radically different, and this is even reflected in dictionary definitions, despite some people who evidently didn't take pain to look into one. What is the opposite? I see two possibilities.
Now, some don't like the word "attitude". What is this then? It is not disease. It is not an emotion: all articles mention discrimination or some similar actions. This is conveniently described by the word "attitude" IMO. Of course, I am not a native English speaker. You are welcome to suggest another word here. mikka (t) 15:14, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind the word "attitude", I just don't think it's appropriate in this context. What is described by phobia (attitude) is already covered at prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance. Meanwhile, such "phobias" are covered already in -phobia. That English would reuse a word, however, with completely opposite meanings, is not that shocking. Look up "cleave" sometime. :-) Kol tov. Tomer TALK 15:27, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
Seeing that the main article is at -phobia, I condensed the non-clinical section, eliminating some of the trivia based materials. Perhaps some of the removed material could be added back, but preferrably to -phobia if possible. -- MegaHasher 06:04, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
At the VfD I see someone sugested the word prejudice as a kind of synonym or additional meaning for "-phobia". IMO it is incorrect. A "-phobia" may be a result of a prejudice, but it may also be a result of mis-judgement, negative experience. Slapping the sticker "prejudice" is not better. If one would follow this logic, then nearly all our negative opinions are effectively prejudice, unless proved in the court of law, since our experience is inherently limited. (Even if they are based on opinion of experts, this does not free us from prejudiced of experts themselves).
Summary: "-phobia" may be a result of prejudice, but not prejudice itself. mikka (t) 15:31, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The sentence regarding the efficacy of neuro-linguistic programming varies significantly with the extensive discrediting found in the NLP article. Phobia should be updated to regard this, and ideally, the references listed should be tracked down and verified.
Science is the key here, guys, of which all methods including NLP and CBT are everything but.-- Spectatorbot13 ( talk) 21:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Hello, I added sources with empirical findings of the CBT expossure treatment. If somebody still has doubts, he may check scholar.google.com and he is going to find many research papers that investigated the expossure treatment. Science is the key you said. NLP has not enough research.- S. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.253.224.15 ( talk) 03:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC) (sorry because I'm not familiarized with editing)I'm a psychology student, and can explain why the patient has to endure discomfort in the cognitive behavioural treatment. It's about expossure and the patient must endure the anxiety caused by the feared object or situation, so that habituation can occur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation . That's why discomfort is inevitable. The equation of NLP to CBT doesn't seem to be a good argument, because the NLP treatment is very different. CBT has tons of scientifical research, NLP doesn't. Simply check google scholar and you will find. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.253.224.15 ( talk) 04:01, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Phobias are a learned non adaptative behaviour, they are not a brain damage result. Did you check the links I left? There werre links to many researchs, it seems you want to talk without researching, based on opinions and not science, please investigate it a bit before talking. Or go to an university and ask, there's a lot of research. --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.31.47.164 ( talk) 18:06, 16 August 2009 (UTC) The "it has not been effective for me" is a ridiculous argument. Efectivity is studied in randomized customized trials, with large groups of patients, and the treatment group is compared to a placebo group. Efectivity is not 100% but it's about 90%. Your arguments show us you know very little about scientifical research. Also they show you are very agressive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.31.47.164 ( talk) 18:12, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
This article begins by defining a phobia as: "a type of anxiety disorder, defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation". It ends with an entire section that discusses what it calls "Non-medical use", which appears to simply be a rant against social phobias. The rant may not belong here, but there's another issue with doing this... the definition given is not the definition for the medical use of phobias per se; it is the definition specifically for psychological use. The APA does not apply to any of the phobias listed here for example; but notably, osmophobia, phonophobia, and photophobia are medical uses. By putting this section ranting about non-medical uses in an article discussing only psychological uses, there's an implication that the psychological use is the only accepted medical use, which is simply bunk as shown by the previous list. IMO it would be better to simply remove the rant against the social phobias... the attempt to contrast them with "True Phobias<TM>" is what introduces this confusion in the first place, and I'm not really sure the rant helps the article at all.
Anxiety disorder is an umbrella topic for phobia, and yet the sub-topic of phobia has so much content that it threatens to take over the whole thing. In DSM-III-R (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder) anxiety disorders are defined as:
This means the word 'phobia' by itsef is not a diagnosis, and the agoraphobia/socialphobia/specific phobia classification in this topic is a layman's classification. One way of fixing this topic is to point out the proper classification under anxiety disorder, and leave detailed information in the proper sub-topics.
This re-organization would cut out the redundant information, and the dictionary like contents. -- MegaHasher 07:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I could submit over 100 phobias onto this article. Link9er 14:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe the traditional diagnosis does not require the fear to be irrational. As long as the fear interferes with normal life, a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders can be made. For example, a life guard with a fear of sharks that interferes with job function can be diagnosed with Specific Phobia. -- MegaHasher 17:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
The Specific Phobia diagnosis does require it to be irrational, even if it does not interfere with daily living. A lifeguard afraid of sharks in the ocean is experiencing a rational fear and is not phobic. If he/she experiences it in a community pool, that is a phobia. Often, people will seek help for phobias when it interferes with their daily living. When the businessperson is required to take airplane transportation and goes to see a psychologist for treatment it has now become a clinical issue, even though it was always irrational.
--
Annalisa579 17:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd argue that the use of the word 'fear' is incorrect; I'd want to replace it with 'aversion'. I'm a behaviour therapist and most phobias I treat don't involve the fear of a consequence, they're more like revulsion. So spider phobia, snake phobia and vomit phobia all involve seeing the phobic object as horrible rather than dangerous. If the person sees the thing as dangerous, then I'd call it a fear, and I'd say that it's rational (even though the feared consequence might be unlikely, or the fear reaction might be disproportionate). Rational (in this sense) means 'having a reason', not 'being right'. -- Alec.brady 21:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Is it reasonable for phobia to be considered the opposite of addiction?-- J. Daily 00:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
In the cited articles, due to classifications issues, and co-occuring conditions, between 8.7% and 18.1% was the best I could come up with. Specific phobia: 8.7%, Social Phobia: 6.8%, Agoraphobia: unknown, any anxiety disorder: 18.1%. -- MegaHasher 07:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Misc phobia list should go into the -phobia topic please. - MegaHasher 07:05, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Considering that most use of the suffix "-phobia" is non-clinical, and the main place that people encounter the word "phobia" in general, and considering that all related informatrion is contained in a totally separate article that is not linked to until far down the page, I created a "see also" at the top to further disambiguate. Bobby P. Smith Sr. Jr. 08:39, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
The author's list of only a few, select phobias seems to be biased. Instead, as complete a list of phobias as possible should be provided, preferably with internal links to other Wikipedia pages that would provide a detailed explanation of the individual phobias.
It would be great if someone could provide some info about hemophobia. I know it is significantly different than other phobias in terms of etiology, symptomology, etc, but I don't know enough to write it up. It likely deserves its own paragraph.-- Annalisa579 17:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
The article at Pica (disorder) has a similar problem to the one this article used to have: namely, the confusion of real disorders (like the eating of clay) with what appear to be joke ones ("gooberphagia, the pathological consumption of peanuts"). Is there anyone here with any sort of familiarity with pica that would like to contribute? I'm not a doctor and Google doesn't seem like it would be too helpful a source in these cases, since the joke ones spread via the internet anyway. Recury 02:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
What I learned in my college psych class was that there was a relatively small list of stimuli that could be sources of phobia, for example thunder, or dogs, etc. The explanation for this was that apparently certain phobias were hard-wired in us thru evolution, and dated back to a time when something like a wild dog would be an actual threat. Thoughts?-- Nick 06:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there are certain stimuli in which we (humans) are primed to fear. For instance, no one "learns" to be afraid of loud noises (such as that of thunder). It is when that unlearned (called "unconditional stimulus") stimulus is paired with some other benign stimulus many times that leads to a person responding to the once benign stimulus with the same fear as the unlearned, instinctual one. Fear of dogs can be an example of generalization. One could be frightened by a single dog bearing it's teeth (instinctual response) and then subsequently fear all dogs because it is linked with the bearing of teeth. That is how some phobias develop. -- Annalisa579 17:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I remember reading about one of the first descriptions of a phobia by Hippocrates of a man who became terrified if he heard the sound of a flute (aulophobia). I am not sure where this would fit into the article though. Bibliomaniac15 19:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I prepared a complete list of phobias, and added it, its an official list that I had from my Psychology class. Enjoy. -BASIK
The links in the phobia list are confusing, some phobia names link to more specific information about that particular phobia, others are not links, and the majority seem to link to the -phob wiktionary page. Why the inconsistency? I think the links to -phob should be changed either to existing pages about the specific condition or have the links removed, with a prominent link to -phob placed somewhere else (which it already is).
The inconsistency makes it seem like the terms which are links all have pages about the specific conditions, when in fact most of them don't, and it's impossible to tell which terms do or do not have more info.
I want somebody to go through this article and decide whether its appropriate to include this in the list of Phobias. Baragalophobia is the fear of Drought. It is a mental condition experienced by people due to the fear of impending Drought. Introduction Baragalophobia is a fear psychosis experienced by generations of men since the dawn of civilisation and begining of settled communities with agriculture as the main occupation. Drought has affected almost all the regions of the world with varying intensity. Good rainfalls are essential for survival of many communities even today. The failure of rains trigger mass fear among the community people about the impending drought and failure of crops and thus their very survival. Prevalence Baragalophobia is prevalent in the regions of the world which are mainly dependent on good rains for food production. Usually the people who suffer from this type of Phobia are from Asia and African countries. Manily rural people, small time farmers and Nomads suffer from this. The Monsoon Most people in Southeast Asia are dependent on good monsoon rains for their agricultural activities and failure of Monsoon rains means the whole year is lost without being able grow anything and a vicious sycle of lack of food for people, lack of fodder, shortage of labour, poverty and economic slump occurs. Appeasement of Rain Gods The mass fear of drought triggers the desperate people to do all sorts of things. The farmers in India perform Pooja's and sacrifices to appease the rain gods. They also perform marriage between Donkeys with the belief that the marriage will bring Rains. Some communities are known to perform animal sacrifices and Frog Marriages. Many farmers commit sucide due the fear of drought and hence impending hardships coming with failure of crops.-- Ganesha1 16:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not convinced the following material should be in the article as it is written, but it has been deleted twice now without discussion even in the summary line. Rather than reverting the change again, I'm posting it here.
Types of Phobias
Any Latin prefix can end with the suffix "phobia", and naming a personal fear, for example, acrophobia, or fear of heights. The root word here is "acro" which is translated in Latin as "height" or "high").
Aleta 19:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
You got it upside down, colleague. We don't have to waste our time in discussing useless things some well-meaning teenagers add to articles. If you see something salvageable, say so, othewise please don't waste other people's time. There is still enormous amount of real work to do in wikipedia. `' mikka 20:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
The Emetophobia page needs more work doing on it. I keep adding an article about typical behaviour and some external links but it keeps getting deleted. JFBurton 19:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Phobia comes from fear that is induced from childhood or pre birth. It’s a state of mind as per my feelings. It’s not a disease precisely. It heals when you overcome your fear. Its not like you get healed of your phobias by some medicine. As I am not a psychologist I don’t know if there is any medicines for Phobia. As I know phobias were healed by counseling or by taking people to the root cause.
States of Mind 1) Conscious 2) Subconscious 3) Trance 4) Sleep 5) Wake 6) Awareness
And Phobia suits all conditions of State of mind
State of Mind is said to be – 1) Induced. 2) Can be controllable or uncontrollable depending on the person’s will power. 3) It’s a Feeling more than existent.
ok, this page states that 704 of 1000 adults (18-70) chosen at the time had a specific fear. i'm not sure if a specific fear is supposed to be different from a phobia, and i'm not sure what the rest of the article at nih is about. but this contradicts the statistics shown in the article if there are no differences between specific fears and phobias.. 80.178.72.69 20:31, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Most psychologists and psychiatrists classify most phobias into three categories:
Social phobias - fears involving other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fears of embarrassment by scrutiny of others, such as eating in public. Social phobias may be further subdivided into the general social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, and specific social phobias, which are cases of anxiety triggered only in specific situations....
This is in error. It is correct that there are three categories but none of those are Social phobias (plural), it's social phobia (no plural). Also the subtypes of social phobia are not the general social phobia and specific social phobias they are generalized social phobia and specific social phobia (again no plural) also known as social phobia; subtype: generalized or subtype: specific . Thunder2k ( talk) 18:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Can phobias actually be considered a mental illness? After all, almost everyone on this earth has a fear of something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.69.139.133 ( talk) 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
My summary didn't go through, so I'll type it here: no bias intended, Greyo, NO method is proven to cure a phobia. Nobody knows what a phobia scientifically is and how to cure it. Cognitive behavioral therapy does not work for everyone (did not work for me) and frankly, it's abuse to force someone to be exposed to something that causes them a lot of stress.-- Spectatorbot13 ( talk) 21:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
"It did't wor for me, terefore it is not going to work for NOBODY." That's an overgeneralization, based on unsufficient evidence. It's making an universal law based in 1 case. Please check research papers, go to google schoolar, or check the links of the article. Otherwise you are imposing your opinions in a very anti-scientifical way.
Please spectator13, read this paper: E. B., Foa; Blau, J. S., Prout, M., & Latimer, P. (1977). "Is horror a necessary component of flooding (implosion)?". Behaviour Research and Therapy (15): 397-402.
It's about research of the insect phobia treatment.
Thank you for your answer. It's the first time i comment in an article, that's why I'm annonymous, but I'll soon register an account. Scientifical papers are accesible to anyone who has acces to an university database. If scientifical papers are unaccesible for people who has not acceso to an university or scientifical database, then scientifical papers are not good sources? Many researchs are only in scientifical databases. Still I mentioned in reference 9 a book which amazon let's you check some pages, and those pages talk about specific phobias.
Mental disorders are not caused always by brain disfunctions. They may be caused either by dysfunctional thoughts (it's not the case of phobias) or by classical conditioning (phobias) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning . By classical conditioning, it means that 2 different stimuli were associated by simultaneity. Like the association of state of fear and and a harmless object, and after the first association, the harmless oject starts evoking the fear.
Research in psychological treatments shows a high effectivity of the expossure treatment. It's true, as you say, that it does not work for everybody, but it works for a lot of people. In the book by Cavallo, in chapter 1, Barlow writes that they have an effectivity of 90%. You may be outside that 90%, and it does not contradict the findings. A test doesn't have to prove 100% effectivity to probe something and be scientifical. Many investigations that don't get 100% effectivity ARE scientifical. For example, many drugs to treat ilnesses are not 100% effective, yet the research behind that is scientifical.
Phobias are not not-liking drinking cherry juice, but about an irrational fear about a harmless object. It would be a phobia if you see a cherry juice and you panic, not if you dislike it. I dislike hot dogs and i don't have a hot dog phobia. I wish you find a way to overcome your phobia if you desire to overcome it. (now i'm going to create a wikiaccount) -- 190.31.47.164 ( talk) 20:35, 16 August 2009 (UTC) already registered, not annonymous anymore, I'm sorry for my writting mistakes. Please answer now to this account if you wish.-- Serj198 ( talk) 20:43, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Science is a methodology, and the disciplines that follow that metodology are scientific. Science is not about truth, but about probabilities. The 90% quote is from a book. It's based on meta-analysis of different clinical trials. The results are not simply what people reports, the investigators must evaluate the phobia symptoms even if the patient reports that he improved. The phobia symptoms are the ones in DSMIV, and they must not be present to inform in a trial that the patient canot be diagnosed anymore as presenting a phobia.
Regarding your symptoms, I would tell you that even a sane brain can associate a pattern like the spider legs moving to a panic reaction. Learning theories study that stuff. Learning has a biological basis, of course. I just want to point that psychological experiences modify the brain and viceversa.
Conditioning may happen by association of memories, even if you never experienced a trauma in front of a spider.
Expossure, in treatments is gradual and controlled, that's why it's not like expossure by surprise. For example in a spider phobia, the first item would be perhaps the word "spider", after that, when that word does not cause anxiety anymore, the expossure goes to the next item, maybe a spider picture, and so on.... (I cannot log in again in the user I registered0) Serj198 -- 200.117.156.166 ( talk) 00:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
The edition is ok, I don't care anymore about the article. I think it was a good decision to refuse taking more meds if you are already taking so many. And sometimes is a bad therapist's tactic to blame the patient when things don't work. When you got stuck, it might have been caused by the inhability of the therapist, and not because of you. I wish you to eventually overcome your phobia.
I disagree when you talk about treatments being testable. You are saying that behaviours are not testable. But the statistics are used to evaluate crime in a city, to evaluate how much somebody con move an arm, to evaluate a lot of behavioural variables, and it's done in a scientifical way. Being testable means that you can define a dependent variable and modifiyng independent variables you see how that affects the dependent variable.
I suggest that a third party intervenes in our conversation, and evaluate what he thinks about science and methods and about if treatments evaluations are scientific. -- 201.253.87.103 ( talk) 20:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 |
Why is there a phobia, gynophobia, listed for an irrational fear of women, without a corresponding phobia of men? I mean, there are obvious reasons why there is no "heterophobia" listed, but sexism goes both ways. I'm pretty sure that theres about as many people (if not more) who are irrationally afraid of men as irrationally afraid of women. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.12.58.252 ( talk) 00:25, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Maybe Its to do with men traditionally approaching women and fear of rejection, also if she's attractive guys can be stimulated causing their voice to deepen adding a fear of not being able to speak. David0288 ( talk) 20:58, 10 April 2011 (UTC)
The place for lists is in the article -phob- and not elsewhere... Thanks. Undead Herle King ( talk) 22:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC)
The article about Caligynephobia (fear of beautiful women) was also deleted last month for lack of sufficient and reliable sources. Quite a number of men, including homosexual men, seriously struggle with this condition. Caligynephobia is also called venustraphobia. -- Richontaban 17:51, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Just a couple of weeks ago, the article about Police Phobia was deleted for lack of sufficient and reliable sources. I understand that phobias are "irrational fears". Is it possible for anyone to be irrationally fearful or afraid of the police, or even the brutally oppressive secret police? Of course most people do not fear the police or secret police, but if the circumstances and conditions in a person's life merit so, it is possible for that person to fear the police just as much as strangers or women, or light. Astynomiaphobia ( Greek αστυνομια astynomia "police" + φοβία phobia "fear") is a sixty-seven (67) year old name for what is occasionally regarded as an irrational fear of police and law enforcement; it is not a neologism. Policophobia has been used more as informal, vulgar and humorous term; its not really a scientific term. The composer of the article should have written that there is much debate and controversy over the existence of a specific phobia for police and secret police, and that only very few psychologist have conducted original research on astynomiaphobia and that only a minority of psychologists and psychiatrists actually use the term in their respective fields. Once psychologists conduct more original research on the "specific phobia" of police, and begin publishing their findings in books and on the internet, then Wikipedia can finally carry an article about Police Phobia or Astynomiaphobia. Of course if such a specific phobia actually exists in its own right, then it would probably add to the burden of the government's prosecutors, because defendants would be able to use astynomiaphobia (fear of police) as a defense in court under certain circumstances. -- Richontaban 17:50, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Could we please distinguish in the article and the list between psychologically-recognized phobias (not that I think the APA is god, or anything, but they at least have a process) and political terms like 'xenophobia' and 'homophobia'? The article is already admitting a distinction in the current last sentence, 'In some cases, however, a fear or hatred is only based on ignorance', but it's not very clear. --MichaelTinkler
WHat is NIMH? --
Tarquin
What happened to the list of phobias that was once linked from this page? It now links to "-phobia" on Wiktionary, which does list some, but not very many. Wiktionary was copying the list over from Wikipedia, but now these have gone (although they can probably be recovered from the history). —
Paul G 08:41, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)
"Psychologists use the term phobia, which comes from the Ancient Greek word for fear (φόβος, fobos), for a number of psychological conditions that can seriously disable their carriers."
Don't understand this sentence. It can seriously disable not only the carriers of psychologists. It may even enhance their carriers if they specialize on the treatmen of phobias.
Or is this a joke?
Geraldstiehler 11:31, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)
And again: It's not only psychologists using this term. Physicians and even the WHO do as well. Geraldstiehler 10:29, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Much better now! Thanks
The list of phobias is in serious need of editing by someone qualified on the subject. It's full of duplicates, ambiguities, and a few entries that might have been just a joke. ("Fear of the band CKY"? Is that for real?) It's also desperately in need of some basic alphabetizing. Could some professional please spend a few minutes cleaning this up?
Any ideas who/when first used this term in (a) medical (2) non-medical senses? In general, the history of the term usage is missing. mikka (t) 23:39, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I was surprised with negative reaction to my separation of part of this aricle into a separate one. I did this for the simple reason of disambiguation: I found it strange that the article, e.g., Homophobia links to a medical article " phobia", which could suggest that homophobia is kind of disease (which may well be the intention of those who coined the term. I am aware that the phobia article has the section "non-medical usage of the term", but it is somewhere down the flow an not ery prominent. Therefore I did what is normal in wikipedia: I performed disambiguation. And was baffled with the vote: Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Phobia (attitude)
My POV is very simple: the two usages are radically different, and this is even reflected in dictionary definitions, despite some people who evidently didn't take pain to look into one. What is the opposite? I see two possibilities.
Now, some don't like the word "attitude". What is this then? It is not disease. It is not an emotion: all articles mention discrimination or some similar actions. This is conveniently described by the word "attitude" IMO. Of course, I am not a native English speaker. You are welcome to suggest another word here. mikka (t) 15:14, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't mind the word "attitude", I just don't think it's appropriate in this context. What is described by phobia (attitude) is already covered at prejudice, discrimination, and intolerance. Meanwhile, such "phobias" are covered already in -phobia. That English would reuse a word, however, with completely opposite meanings, is not that shocking. Look up "cleave" sometime. :-) Kol tov. Tomer TALK 15:27, Jun 22, 2005 (UTC)
Seeing that the main article is at -phobia, I condensed the non-clinical section, eliminating some of the trivia based materials. Perhaps some of the removed material could be added back, but preferrably to -phobia if possible. -- MegaHasher 06:04, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
At the VfD I see someone sugested the word prejudice as a kind of synonym or additional meaning for "-phobia". IMO it is incorrect. A "-phobia" may be a result of a prejudice, but it may also be a result of mis-judgement, negative experience. Slapping the sticker "prejudice" is not better. If one would follow this logic, then nearly all our negative opinions are effectively prejudice, unless proved in the court of law, since our experience is inherently limited. (Even if they are based on opinion of experts, this does not free us from prejudiced of experts themselves).
Summary: "-phobia" may be a result of prejudice, but not prejudice itself. mikka (t) 15:31, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)
The sentence regarding the efficacy of neuro-linguistic programming varies significantly with the extensive discrediting found in the NLP article. Phobia should be updated to regard this, and ideally, the references listed should be tracked down and verified.
Science is the key here, guys, of which all methods including NLP and CBT are everything but.-- Spectatorbot13 ( talk) 21:19, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
Hello, I added sources with empirical findings of the CBT expossure treatment. If somebody still has doubts, he may check scholar.google.com and he is going to find many research papers that investigated the expossure treatment. Science is the key you said. NLP has not enough research.- S. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.253.224.15 ( talk) 03:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC) (sorry because I'm not familiarized with editing)I'm a psychology student, and can explain why the patient has to endure discomfort in the cognitive behavioural treatment. It's about expossure and the patient must endure the anxiety caused by the feared object or situation, so that habituation can occur http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habituation . That's why discomfort is inevitable. The equation of NLP to CBT doesn't seem to be a good argument, because the NLP treatment is very different. CBT has tons of scientifical research, NLP doesn't. Simply check google scholar and you will find. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.253.224.15 ( talk) 04:01, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Phobias are a learned non adaptative behaviour, they are not a brain damage result. Did you check the links I left? There werre links to many researchs, it seems you want to talk without researching, based on opinions and not science, please investigate it a bit before talking. Or go to an university and ask, there's a lot of research. --- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.31.47.164 ( talk) 18:06, 16 August 2009 (UTC) The "it has not been effective for me" is a ridiculous argument. Efectivity is studied in randomized customized trials, with large groups of patients, and the treatment group is compared to a placebo group. Efectivity is not 100% but it's about 90%. Your arguments show us you know very little about scientifical research. Also they show you are very agressive. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.31.47.164 ( talk) 18:12, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
This article begins by defining a phobia as: "a type of anxiety disorder, defined by a persistent and excessive fear of an object or situation". It ends with an entire section that discusses what it calls "Non-medical use", which appears to simply be a rant against social phobias. The rant may not belong here, but there's another issue with doing this... the definition given is not the definition for the medical use of phobias per se; it is the definition specifically for psychological use. The APA does not apply to any of the phobias listed here for example; but notably, osmophobia, phonophobia, and photophobia are medical uses. By putting this section ranting about non-medical uses in an article discussing only psychological uses, there's an implication that the psychological use is the only accepted medical use, which is simply bunk as shown by the previous list. IMO it would be better to simply remove the rant against the social phobias... the attempt to contrast them with "True Phobias<TM>" is what introduces this confusion in the first place, and I'm not really sure the rant helps the article at all.
Anxiety disorder is an umbrella topic for phobia, and yet the sub-topic of phobia has so much content that it threatens to take over the whole thing. In DSM-III-R (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder) anxiety disorders are defined as:
This means the word 'phobia' by itsef is not a diagnosis, and the agoraphobia/socialphobia/specific phobia classification in this topic is a layman's classification. One way of fixing this topic is to point out the proper classification under anxiety disorder, and leave detailed information in the proper sub-topics.
This re-organization would cut out the redundant information, and the dictionary like contents. -- MegaHasher 07:36, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I could submit over 100 phobias onto this article. Link9er 14:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I believe the traditional diagnosis does not require the fear to be irrational. As long as the fear interferes with normal life, a diagnosis under one of the anxiety disorders can be made. For example, a life guard with a fear of sharks that interferes with job function can be diagnosed with Specific Phobia. -- MegaHasher 17:09, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
The Specific Phobia diagnosis does require it to be irrational, even if it does not interfere with daily living. A lifeguard afraid of sharks in the ocean is experiencing a rational fear and is not phobic. If he/she experiences it in a community pool, that is a phobia. Often, people will seek help for phobias when it interferes with their daily living. When the businessperson is required to take airplane transportation and goes to see a psychologist for treatment it has now become a clinical issue, even though it was always irrational.
--
Annalisa579 17:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I'd argue that the use of the word 'fear' is incorrect; I'd want to replace it with 'aversion'. I'm a behaviour therapist and most phobias I treat don't involve the fear of a consequence, they're more like revulsion. So spider phobia, snake phobia and vomit phobia all involve seeing the phobic object as horrible rather than dangerous. If the person sees the thing as dangerous, then I'd call it a fear, and I'd say that it's rational (even though the feared consequence might be unlikely, or the fear reaction might be disproportionate). Rational (in this sense) means 'having a reason', not 'being right'. -- Alec.brady 21:54, 28 January 2007 (UTC)
Is it reasonable for phobia to be considered the opposite of addiction?-- J. Daily 00:02, 6 February 2006 (UTC)
In the cited articles, due to classifications issues, and co-occuring conditions, between 8.7% and 18.1% was the best I could come up with. Specific phobia: 8.7%, Social Phobia: 6.8%, Agoraphobia: unknown, any anxiety disorder: 18.1%. -- MegaHasher 07:40, 7 February 2006 (UTC)
Misc phobia list should go into the -phobia topic please. - MegaHasher 07:05, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
Considering that most use of the suffix "-phobia" is non-clinical, and the main place that people encounter the word "phobia" in general, and considering that all related informatrion is contained in a totally separate article that is not linked to until far down the page, I created a "see also" at the top to further disambiguate. Bobby P. Smith Sr. Jr. 08:39, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
The author's list of only a few, select phobias seems to be biased. Instead, as complete a list of phobias as possible should be provided, preferably with internal links to other Wikipedia pages that would provide a detailed explanation of the individual phobias.
It would be great if someone could provide some info about hemophobia. I know it is significantly different than other phobias in terms of etiology, symptomology, etc, but I don't know enough to write it up. It likely deserves its own paragraph.-- Annalisa579 17:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
The article at Pica (disorder) has a similar problem to the one this article used to have: namely, the confusion of real disorders (like the eating of clay) with what appear to be joke ones ("gooberphagia, the pathological consumption of peanuts"). Is there anyone here with any sort of familiarity with pica that would like to contribute? I'm not a doctor and Google doesn't seem like it would be too helpful a source in these cases, since the joke ones spread via the internet anyway. Recury 02:43, 4 May 2006 (UTC)
What I learned in my college psych class was that there was a relatively small list of stimuli that could be sources of phobia, for example thunder, or dogs, etc. The explanation for this was that apparently certain phobias were hard-wired in us thru evolution, and dated back to a time when something like a wild dog would be an actual threat. Thoughts?-- Nick 06:01, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
Yes, there are certain stimuli in which we (humans) are primed to fear. For instance, no one "learns" to be afraid of loud noises (such as that of thunder). It is when that unlearned (called "unconditional stimulus") stimulus is paired with some other benign stimulus many times that leads to a person responding to the once benign stimulus with the same fear as the unlearned, instinctual one. Fear of dogs can be an example of generalization. One could be frightened by a single dog bearing it's teeth (instinctual response) and then subsequently fear all dogs because it is linked with the bearing of teeth. That is how some phobias develop. -- Annalisa579 17:06, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
I remember reading about one of the first descriptions of a phobia by Hippocrates of a man who became terrified if he heard the sound of a flute (aulophobia). I am not sure where this would fit into the article though. Bibliomaniac15 19:27, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
I prepared a complete list of phobias, and added it, its an official list that I had from my Psychology class. Enjoy. -BASIK
The links in the phobia list are confusing, some phobia names link to more specific information about that particular phobia, others are not links, and the majority seem to link to the -phob wiktionary page. Why the inconsistency? I think the links to -phob should be changed either to existing pages about the specific condition or have the links removed, with a prominent link to -phob placed somewhere else (which it already is).
The inconsistency makes it seem like the terms which are links all have pages about the specific conditions, when in fact most of them don't, and it's impossible to tell which terms do or do not have more info.
I want somebody to go through this article and decide whether its appropriate to include this in the list of Phobias. Baragalophobia is the fear of Drought. It is a mental condition experienced by people due to the fear of impending Drought. Introduction Baragalophobia is a fear psychosis experienced by generations of men since the dawn of civilisation and begining of settled communities with agriculture as the main occupation. Drought has affected almost all the regions of the world with varying intensity. Good rainfalls are essential for survival of many communities even today. The failure of rains trigger mass fear among the community people about the impending drought and failure of crops and thus their very survival. Prevalence Baragalophobia is prevalent in the regions of the world which are mainly dependent on good rains for food production. Usually the people who suffer from this type of Phobia are from Asia and African countries. Manily rural people, small time farmers and Nomads suffer from this. The Monsoon Most people in Southeast Asia are dependent on good monsoon rains for their agricultural activities and failure of Monsoon rains means the whole year is lost without being able grow anything and a vicious sycle of lack of food for people, lack of fodder, shortage of labour, poverty and economic slump occurs. Appeasement of Rain Gods The mass fear of drought triggers the desperate people to do all sorts of things. The farmers in India perform Pooja's and sacrifices to appease the rain gods. They also perform marriage between Donkeys with the belief that the marriage will bring Rains. Some communities are known to perform animal sacrifices and Frog Marriages. Many farmers commit sucide due the fear of drought and hence impending hardships coming with failure of crops.-- Ganesha1 16:52, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
I'm not convinced the following material should be in the article as it is written, but it has been deleted twice now without discussion even in the summary line. Rather than reverting the change again, I'm posting it here.
Types of Phobias
Any Latin prefix can end with the suffix "phobia", and naming a personal fear, for example, acrophobia, or fear of heights. The root word here is "acro" which is translated in Latin as "height" or "high").
Aleta 19:56, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
You got it upside down, colleague. We don't have to waste our time in discussing useless things some well-meaning teenagers add to articles. If you see something salvageable, say so, othewise please don't waste other people's time. There is still enormous amount of real work to do in wikipedia. `' mikka 20:03, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
The Emetophobia page needs more work doing on it. I keep adding an article about typical behaviour and some external links but it keeps getting deleted. JFBurton 19:44, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Phobia comes from fear that is induced from childhood or pre birth. It’s a state of mind as per my feelings. It’s not a disease precisely. It heals when you overcome your fear. Its not like you get healed of your phobias by some medicine. As I am not a psychologist I don’t know if there is any medicines for Phobia. As I know phobias were healed by counseling or by taking people to the root cause.
States of Mind 1) Conscious 2) Subconscious 3) Trance 4) Sleep 5) Wake 6) Awareness
And Phobia suits all conditions of State of mind
State of Mind is said to be – 1) Induced. 2) Can be controllable or uncontrollable depending on the person’s will power. 3) It’s a Feeling more than existent.
ok, this page states that 704 of 1000 adults (18-70) chosen at the time had a specific fear. i'm not sure if a specific fear is supposed to be different from a phobia, and i'm not sure what the rest of the article at nih is about. but this contradicts the statistics shown in the article if there are no differences between specific fears and phobias.. 80.178.72.69 20:31, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Most psychologists and psychiatrists classify most phobias into three categories:
Social phobias - fears involving other people or social situations such as performance anxiety or fears of embarrassment by scrutiny of others, such as eating in public. Social phobias may be further subdivided into the general social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, and specific social phobias, which are cases of anxiety triggered only in specific situations....
This is in error. It is correct that there are three categories but none of those are Social phobias (plural), it's social phobia (no plural). Also the subtypes of social phobia are not the general social phobia and specific social phobias they are generalized social phobia and specific social phobia (again no plural) also known as social phobia; subtype: generalized or subtype: specific . Thunder2k ( talk) 18:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Can phobias actually be considered a mental illness? After all, almost everyone on this earth has a fear of something. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.69.139.133 ( talk) 01:04, 27 December 2008 (UTC)
My summary didn't go through, so I'll type it here: no bias intended, Greyo, NO method is proven to cure a phobia. Nobody knows what a phobia scientifically is and how to cure it. Cognitive behavioral therapy does not work for everyone (did not work for me) and frankly, it's abuse to force someone to be exposed to something that causes them a lot of stress.-- Spectatorbot13 ( talk) 21:16, 6 June 2009 (UTC)
"It did't wor for me, terefore it is not going to work for NOBODY." That's an overgeneralization, based on unsufficient evidence. It's making an universal law based in 1 case. Please check research papers, go to google schoolar, or check the links of the article. Otherwise you are imposing your opinions in a very anti-scientifical way.
Please spectator13, read this paper: E. B., Foa; Blau, J. S., Prout, M., & Latimer, P. (1977). "Is horror a necessary component of flooding (implosion)?". Behaviour Research and Therapy (15): 397-402.
It's about research of the insect phobia treatment.
Thank you for your answer. It's the first time i comment in an article, that's why I'm annonymous, but I'll soon register an account. Scientifical papers are accesible to anyone who has acces to an university database. If scientifical papers are unaccesible for people who has not acceso to an university or scientifical database, then scientifical papers are not good sources? Many researchs are only in scientifical databases. Still I mentioned in reference 9 a book which amazon let's you check some pages, and those pages talk about specific phobias.
Mental disorders are not caused always by brain disfunctions. They may be caused either by dysfunctional thoughts (it's not the case of phobias) or by classical conditioning (phobias) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning . By classical conditioning, it means that 2 different stimuli were associated by simultaneity. Like the association of state of fear and and a harmless object, and after the first association, the harmless oject starts evoking the fear.
Research in psychological treatments shows a high effectivity of the expossure treatment. It's true, as you say, that it does not work for everybody, but it works for a lot of people. In the book by Cavallo, in chapter 1, Barlow writes that they have an effectivity of 90%. You may be outside that 90%, and it does not contradict the findings. A test doesn't have to prove 100% effectivity to probe something and be scientifical. Many investigations that don't get 100% effectivity ARE scientifical. For example, many drugs to treat ilnesses are not 100% effective, yet the research behind that is scientifical.
Phobias are not not-liking drinking cherry juice, but about an irrational fear about a harmless object. It would be a phobia if you see a cherry juice and you panic, not if you dislike it. I dislike hot dogs and i don't have a hot dog phobia. I wish you find a way to overcome your phobia if you desire to overcome it. (now i'm going to create a wikiaccount) -- 190.31.47.164 ( talk) 20:35, 16 August 2009 (UTC) already registered, not annonymous anymore, I'm sorry for my writting mistakes. Please answer now to this account if you wish.-- Serj198 ( talk) 20:43, 16 August 2009 (UTC)
Science is a methodology, and the disciplines that follow that metodology are scientific. Science is not about truth, but about probabilities. The 90% quote is from a book. It's based on meta-analysis of different clinical trials. The results are not simply what people reports, the investigators must evaluate the phobia symptoms even if the patient reports that he improved. The phobia symptoms are the ones in DSMIV, and they must not be present to inform in a trial that the patient canot be diagnosed anymore as presenting a phobia.
Regarding your symptoms, I would tell you that even a sane brain can associate a pattern like the spider legs moving to a panic reaction. Learning theories study that stuff. Learning has a biological basis, of course. I just want to point that psychological experiences modify the brain and viceversa.
Conditioning may happen by association of memories, even if you never experienced a trauma in front of a spider.
Expossure, in treatments is gradual and controlled, that's why it's not like expossure by surprise. For example in a spider phobia, the first item would be perhaps the word "spider", after that, when that word does not cause anxiety anymore, the expossure goes to the next item, maybe a spider picture, and so on.... (I cannot log in again in the user I registered0) Serj198 -- 200.117.156.166 ( talk) 00:05, 17 August 2009 (UTC)
The edition is ok, I don't care anymore about the article. I think it was a good decision to refuse taking more meds if you are already taking so many. And sometimes is a bad therapist's tactic to blame the patient when things don't work. When you got stuck, it might have been caused by the inhability of the therapist, and not because of you. I wish you to eventually overcome your phobia.
I disagree when you talk about treatments being testable. You are saying that behaviours are not testable. But the statistics are used to evaluate crime in a city, to evaluate how much somebody con move an arm, to evaluate a lot of behavioural variables, and it's done in a scientifical way. Being testable means that you can define a dependent variable and modifiyng independent variables you see how that affects the dependent variable.
I suggest that a third party intervenes in our conversation, and evaluate what he thinks about science and methods and about if treatments evaluations are scientific. -- 201.253.87.103 ( talk) 20:33, 18 August 2009 (UTC)