Talk:Phobia

Freudian Dictionary

We have in the phobias, after all, merely the substituting of one external danger for another. The fact that in phobias the ego is able to escape anxiety through a process of avoidance or by means of an inhibition is in complete accord with the concept that this anxiety is simply an affective signal, and that with regard to the economic situation involved nothing has been altered.

Among the phobias two groups may be differentiated, according to the nature of the object feared: (1) common phobias, an exaggerated fear of all those things that everyone detests or fears to some extent: such as night, solitude, death, illness, dangers in general, snakes, etc.; (2) specific phobias, the fear of special circumstances that inspire no fear in the normal man; for example, agoraphobia and the other phobias of locomotion.

Phobias of Early Childhood

The enigmatic phobias of early childhood deserve mention once again. Certain of them -the fear of being alone, of the dark, of strangers-we can understand as reactions to the danger of object loss; with regard to others-fear of small animals, thunderstorms, etc. -there is the possibility that they represent the atrophied remnants of an innate preparedness against reality dangers such as is so well developed in other animals. It is the part of this archaic heritage having to do with object loss which alone has utility for man. If such childhood phobias become fixed, grow more intense, and persist into a later period of life, analysis demonstrates that their content has become connected with instinctual demands, has become the representative of internal dangers also.

Phobia and Sexual Life

The main point in the problem of phobias seems to me that phobias do not occur at all when the vita sexualis is normal.