Fears & Anxieties VIII
Bill Long 2/27/07
Finishing up the 1953 List
I am listing and discussing the fears listed in the 1953 Encyclopedia of Aberrations which don't appear before 1925. Thus, they "grew up" between 1925 and 1953. Here is the rest of the list.
7. Carcinophobia is defined as an obsessive fear of developing cancer. I was surprised to see so few appearances of the term when I did a Google search (fewer than 1000), which means that the word carcinophobia has dropped out of modern usage. It didn't appear, for example, in the 1988 Encyclopedia of Phobias. There are more than 18,000 "hits" for "cancerophobia," however, so that is what the modern fear must be called. Interesting it is that we may now be abandoning Greek and Latin for our fear roots, even though most of the newly-invented fears are still based in the classical languages. After all, if someone is going to charge you an arm and a leg to heal you, s/he ought to have the courtesy to describe your problem with a word you can't understand.
8. Categelophobia has fewer than 40 Google "hits" when I call it up. Therefore, the fear has either disappeared or, more likely, has morphed to something else. Categelophobia means the fear of being ridiculed or being thought absurd. Maybe the word has dropped out of speech for two reasons: first, it is so hard to pronounce and, more important, people actually crave ridicule today. It gives "legs" to your celebrity status. So what happens when we bury a fear? Does that mean it is like the sound of one hand clapping? A tree falling in the forest when no one is around?
9. Cenophobia is the morbid fear (almost all definitions have "morbid" or "obsessive" in them, which allows a lot of wiggle room for psychologists and doctors) of large halls or auditoriums. I suppose it differs from agoraphobia in that the latter presupposes that you are outside when the fear hits. I think that is the difference. But we have a problem here, Houston. Cenophobia is, in modern lists, listed interchangeably with centophoboa, which is a "fear of new things." But that fear is also known as kainotophobia (the 1953 Encyclopedia called it a "dread of change or novelty") and, while we are throwing around terms, we might also call it neophobia. There really is no reason not to do so. Well, we really have to conclude that the 1953 Encyclopedia didn't know what it as doing on this one.
10. Chonophobia is the "fear of time," though I don't know what aspects of time fear it covers. Does it mean the fear of time's passage? Or that there won't be enough time? Or what may happen in the future? An artsy web site defines the concept as follows: "It is an insistent struggle with time – the will of both artists and critics to either master its passage, to still its acceleration or to give form to its changing positions. This preoccupation, she claims, illuminates the emergence of new information technology in the post-war years and serves as a prelude to our current fixation with time and speed within our digital culture..." Sounds pretty suspect to me. People are always struggling with the limitations of time--not least of whom is the parent who has three kids all over town doing their various sports and lessons. No need to invent a fear over it.
11. Ereuthopobia is a morbid fear of blushing. You would think that erythrophobia would have covered the same subject, and indeed today it does, but possibly in the 1950s erythrophobia was still caught up with its original meaning--the fear of seeing red after cataract operations.
12. I love Hadephobia, which is defined as the fear of committing the unpardonable sin (referring to Mk. 3:29). When I was in the pastorate I met people with all kinds of fears, but rarely did I meet this. I met this when I was about 18 in college, as dedicated and hyper fearful Christian college students wondered, among other things, if they had so offended God in their life that this might be their fate. Normally the best antidote to this is to convince the person that they are a pretty small speck on the earth, and God really isn't going to keep records on this one. But, as we know, people do all kinds of unnecessary things to beat themselves up...
13. I have already mentioned kainotophobia.
14. The person who invented kakorrhaphiophobia, the fear of failure, ought to be sentenced to death for inventing the word. Even though there are 19,000 "Hits" for the term in a Google search, I think that another is gaining ground on it--atychiphobia. Though, I think that the fear of success, for which there is no term as I can discover, is probably a more real fear than that of failing. After all, it is quite easy to fail; we all do it miserably so many times. It is success that eludes us, and after a while I think we may be afraid of what it might be like to be successful. We have become so inured to failure that success might just upset our boat. Come up with a word for that, please.
15. Keraunophobia is also a completely unnecessary term. It means "fear of thunder," but we have had brontophobia since 1895. Nevertheless, keraunophobia is winning the "Hit" race, having doubled its brontophobic competitior.
16. Laliophobia is the dread of the necessity of speaking when one suffers from a speech impairment. Fair enough. I bet that fear is very real. Yet, there are fewer than 1000 hits for it. I guess the fear is not as widespread as one might think.
The editors list "fear of mice," but they don't have a term for it. Classicists rushed to the rescue, and before long (though I don't know which year) we had musophobia as well as suriphobia and murophobia. They all mean the fear of mice or rats. As one web site says, "Sufferers from suriphobia get shivers when they hear scurrying." Apparently there is even a Saint, Gertrude of Nivelles, whose feast day is coming up (March 17) who is supposed to help you with suriphobia. A saint for everything. By the way, she is depicted as an abbess with mice running up her pastoral staff. You can read all about it. Why fear them, when she seems to have tamed them?
17. Ophidiophobia is the fear of snakes. You would think that this would have existed far before 1925.
18. Paralipophobia is a dread of responsibilities, something that hits even the best of us...
19. Skopophobia is the fear of spies, but this may have declined quite a bit since WWII.
20. Taphephobia is the fear of being buried alive.
21. Uranophobia is the fear of the heavens. I suppose this means that at the least deviation of the heavens in their course you will be clobbered.
22. Zelophobia is an abnormal fear of jealousy.
Well, this takes us to more than 50 fears by the early 1950s. I will abandon my search here, since once the 1960s hit, the world exploded. We usually think of the 1960s as a political or social explosion, but I choose to think of it as an explosion of words. Indeed, our fears began to multiply like rats, with which, if you love St. Gertrude, she might be able to give you assistance.
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