Phobias & Anxieties VI

Though I have only introduced about 40 or so terms for fears in the previous five essays, and though there are probably 500 more I could introduce, I will end it all with this essay, lest you or I get bored in the narration. If you want a list, which is derived from the Encyclopedia of Phobias, here is one. Here is another. Let's do the following: (1) give categories, and a few examples, of fears; (2) list some obvious ones that should probably not be so designated; (3) list some that ought to have separate designation and then give a few funny ones to finish our treatment.

Categories of Phobias

Because scholarship is based on categorization, a yearning that goes back further than Linneaus, some have tried to categorize phobias. Here is one such categorization: (a) fear of animals; (b) fear of the natural or human environment; (c) fear of blood/injections/injury or violation of bodily integrity; (d) fear of various situations in life. Let's try to give a few examples of each. We can fear dogs (cynophobia) or cats (ailurophobia, gatophobia, felinophobia), or mice (musophobia) or tics/mites (acarophobia) or spiders (arachnophobia) or wasps (spheksophobia) or snakes (ophiophobia/ophidophobia). Seems like there are loads of other things to fear for which there are no words--like fear of sharks or caterpillars, or slimy bugs... With respect to the natural or human environment, we might have a fear of graveyards (coimetrophobia) or tombstones (placophobia) or graves (taphephobia); There is fear of beards (pogonophobia) or cyclones (anemophobia) or knives (aichmophobia), or fear of night (nyctophobia or achluophobia or scotophobia or lygophobia--lygay is Greek for "twilight") or robbers (sclerophobia) or being a victim of robbers (what is the difference? harpaxophobia) or hell (hadephobia or stygiophobia or styiophobia). I think I will stop here, though I could go into roots galore.

Then there was the category of blood (hemaphobia or hematophobia) or injections or injuries. Tocophobia is a fear of childbirth (not one I have experienced), teratophobia is fear of defomed people, thixophobia is the fear of being touched. But, we also have haptophobia, haphephobia, hapnophobia and various other combinations to express fear of touch. Then there is the fear of hair (chaetophobia or trichophobia); I wonder if the musical HAIR had anything to do with it... Well, there are then the fears of situations or various types of people. You can be scared of the number 13 (triskaidekaphobia) or Friday the 13th (paraskavedekatriaphobia) or fear of stepmothers (novercaphobia) or stepfathers (vitriocophobia) or ghosts (spectrophobia) or trains (siderodromophobia) or lots of other words. I think I have even smushed the categories together.

We have words for fear of thunder and lightning (brontophobia and astrophobia), pins and needles (enetophobia and belonophobia) and other sets of twos.

Asinine Words for Fears

So we have geniophobia, which is the "fear of chins." Apparently someone felt at one time that you could tell someone's personality by the shape of his/her chin, and thus a geniophobia reflected that reality. There is actually a word medectophobia, defined as the "fear of the outline of one's penis being seen through one's pants." Who in heaven's name (or maybe not heaven's name?) came up with that one? We have fear of string (linophobia), but I have never run into someone who has feared that. We have fear of things on the left (levophobia or sinsitrophobia), fear of things on the right (dextrophobia), fear of standing (stasiophobia), fear of sitting (cathisophobia). With left and right and stand up, sit down, I wonder if there is fear of "Fight, Fight, Fight!" There is a fear of church (ecclesiophobia), but most sensible-minded people would just stop going to church. Why do we need photophobia to express a fear of light,? And, radiophobia is fear of X-rays, bibliophobia fear of books,and Satanophobia, fear of guess who? Then, when I ran into cyberphobia, I just about lost it. You can fear computers, indeed. I do. But why develop a word for it?

Words we SHOULD Have But Don't

And then, just when you seemingly have words for every kind of phobia you can imagine, and many that you have a hard time imagining (there is trichinophobia, for example..the fear of catching trichinosis), you have situations where no fear or no word for the fear has been suggested. This will probably stimulate the creativity of scholars and linguists for many years to come, but here are a few areas they might focus on. The Encyclopedia, for example, said that the "fear of bugs" was, drum roll, "bug phobia"! How lame is that! When they have a word for the fear of wasps, spheksophobia, but don't have a generic one for the fear of bugs, well, you know that something is wrong. We can make up one right here on the spot--entomophobia. You have just witnessed history, my friends. Well, actually, there is a word entomophobia in the Encyclopedia, which is defined as "fear of insects." But they just leave "fear of bugs" as "bug phobia." Weird.

Well, there is no word for fear of abandonment, or fear of acid rain, or fear of weight loss. The word for fear of weight gain is pocrescophobia (for reasons I am not fully aware of). Well, I guess our culture doesn't fear losing weight. Then, there is no word for fear of success, though there are several for fear of failure. One word for fear of failure that they had the nerve to print was kakorrhaphiophobia. What a ridiculous word. They just have to come up with a better one than that. Then there is no word for "fear of cancer." If you can develop a word for fear of trichinosis, you can sure develop one for fear of cancer. And, to finish things off...there is no word for "fear of commitment" even though a 1987 book entitled Men Who Can't Love was devoted to it. They wimpily call it "commitment phobia." Can't we do better than that?

Well, phobias, like Jesus' poor, are always with us now. Some are real, I am sure, and some are quite laughable. But, for me, they provide the opportunity to learn new words and brush up on my Latin and Greek roots. Anything that does that can't be all bad.

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