Ten percent of adults suffer from a phobia – that is, “an uncontrollable, irrational and persistent fear of a specific object, situation or activity”. This is hardly surprising given the extensive and eclectic number of phobias on offer. These range from the fear of enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) to fear of bald people (peladophobia) to fear of long words (hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia – certainly long enough to give anyone a fright). Indeed, any Oxford student has a good chance of developing ergophobia, the fear of work, or at the very least, bibliophobia, the fear of books.
The question of why we have phobias has frustrated psychologists for centuries. Freudians detect a causal link between a child’s relationship with his parents and his behaviour in his later years. For example, adult agoraphobics (those who fear open spaces) may have once feared abandonment by a cold and unaffectionate mother, which has led to a fear of rejection or helplessness in adulthood. Alternatively, agoraphobia may develop in people seeking to avoid situations they have found painful or embarrassing in the past.
Others posit the theory that phobias are socially transmittable. Research suggests that half of all people with phobias have never had a painful experience with the object of their fears. It is therefore possible that, having heard of an injury inflicted on another person by a specific thing, for this reason, someone has developed a vicarious fear of that thing.
But do phobias develop over time or are they within us innately, from time immemorial? It is suggested that humans have acquired fears of certain animals and situations that, in our evolutionary history, threatened our survival, thereby explaining why snakes and spiders are the top two creature phobias. Our ancestors spent much time on the savannas in Africa, the women gathering food on their knees with their infants close by. Whereas lions could be seen from a distance and therefore avoided, spiders and snakes were concealed and so posed a more threatening ‘invisible’ danger.
Another factor to consider is whether or not phobias are culture-specific. Agoraphobia for example, is much more common in the US and Europe than in other areas of the world, while a phobia common in Japan, but almost nonexistent in the West, is taijin kyofusho, an incapacitating fear of offending others through one's own awkward social behaviour. Since modesty and a sensitive regard for others is strongly entrenched in Japanese society, tajin kyofusho can be seen as a product of Japan’s distinctive value system.
