'The Book of Phobias & Manias' by Kate Summerscale
Benjamin Rush signed the Declaration of Independence—and also recoined the Greek word for fear, phobia, to describe psychological phenomena. Since his time a plethora of phobias have been identified or misidentified by psychologists, psychiatrists and amateurs alike. British author Kate Summerscale is a gifted amateur who has written a witty yet serious encyclopedia of phobias (obsessive revolutions) and manias (obsessive attractions).
A few of the maladies in her lexicon are derived from bigotry (xenophobia) but most “describe real and sometimes tormenting conditions.” According to the American Psychiatric Association, a phobia “must be excessive, unreasonable … and it must have driven the individual to avoid the feared situation or object in a way that interferes with normal functioning.” Summerscale adds that a phobia or a mania can endow objects with unwanted power. “They exert a physical hold, like magic, and in doing so reveal our own strangeness.”
Some phobias may result from childhood trauma. Naturally, Sigmund Freud thought they were sexual in origin. Currently fashionable notions drawn from evolutionary biology claim that phobias are “part of our evolutionary inheritance.” Summerscale points out that those theories “are based on post hoc reasoning,” they don’t account for all phobias “nor why some individuals are phobic and others not.” She adds that many phobias are socially constructed.
Summerscale quotes early 20th century American psychologist Granville Stanley Hall several times, including his remark, “What man really most fears is himself.”
