Being in front of a spider, a snake, a syringe or having to fly in an airplane can cause a state of panic and anxiety for many people. It is an irrational fear known as a phobia. It may be due to a traumatic event in childhood or behavior acquired at home. Most of the time they do not respond to logic and can incapacitate the subject who suffers them in a timely manner. These types of phobias are called simple phobias and they differ from complex phobias in the incapacitation they cause in everyday life . That is to say, one does not come across terrifying spiders every day, but if what you are afraid of is finding yourself in open spaces, this completely conditions your life and you will try not to leave the house more than necessary or even not to leave it .
As simple phobias we have an infinity of them. There are those who cannot see, for example, a movie like It , based on the novel by Stephen King, without being terrified by the first sequence. The clown’s bloody mouth is more than enough to paralyze someone suffering from coulrophobia , the fear of clowns. It doesn’t matter if it’s the nicest clown in the world, a coulrophobic is capable of having a panic attack just by seeing the billboards of a circus. Or what about those who are terrified of dolls ( pediophobia) , or of trees and forests ( dendrophobia or hylophobia) and let’s not say how bad it is for eisotrophobes , those with a phobia of mirrors. Yes, there are those who are unable to have a mirror at home, and sometimes they can’t even stand the reflection on other surfaces such as a shop window on the street or a puddle of water.
The world of the spiritual and the religious also arouses many fears: Satanophobia, Demonophobia or Spectrophobia are easy to define. But what is ecclesophobia or hagiophobia? Well, they are phobias of churches, sacred places or saints. Zeusophobia refers to God or different gods and theophobia, to religions. And if we talk about the fear of the devil and the associated number three sixes engraved on your head, it also has its name: trihexaphobia .
Technological progress has also given rise to a wide phobic catalog. It all started with mechanical devices, giving rise to mechanophobia . And from there we move on to technophobia and cyberphobia ; an enormous fear of computers, information technology… What is curious is that something as simple as a mobile phone provokes such disparate feelings: there are those who cannot even get close to one of these devices and suffer from telephonophobia and other Instead, they suffer from nomophobia , panic about losing their mobile, running out of battery or coverage… This term was coined by the British Post Office in 2011 and is an acronym for no-mobile-phone . And the most interesting thing is that according to the Royal Mail study, 60% of men and 20% of women are terrified of not being able to use their mobile.
Astronomy is also not safe from phobias because there are those who are unable to raise their heads to look at the sky: they are uranophobes . Likewise, those who are overwhelmed simply by thinking about the infinity of the cosmos are called apeirophobes . Cometophobia, cosmicophobia, astrophobia, spacephobia… all these phobias are part of the same family. An astronaut could not suffer from any of them, although if we think about it, perhaps his vocation is due to the fact that he suffers from barophobia, fear of terrestrial gravity.
And to conclude, here is an equally curious catalog of fears about something as everyday as money. If what frightens us is the absence of it, so common in times of crisis, we could be suffering from peniaphobia or fear of poverty. Anyone can understand this, but what is most difficult to explain in our society is the fear of materialism, hylephobia . And not only that, there are plutophobes , people with fear of wealth and abundance. And rarest of all, chrometophobia , an outright fear of spending or losing money, leading to not paying bills.
References:
Sassaroli, S. and Lorenzini, L. (2000) Fears and phobias, Ed. Paidós
