A CASE of MYSOPHOBIA Presence Father, Something Else That Symbolises His Father
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
only been observed in cases of extremely severe infection. Often one of the body organs, usually the weakest link in our system, becomes affected. Doctors know that fear causes the heart to race madly, and this can obviously aggravate a heart condition. Chromic fears have been known to set off ulcers. And fear is capable of producing changes in the skin. The treatment of phobias is difficult. E.\perts believe they are the result of deep-rooted emotional problems which usually originated during early childhood. The child's fear, they say, usually is symbolic of an inner conflict which he prefers not to face. For instance, (Reproduced from a SIS Press Service's Medical a child may up in great fear of his father, whom he Features dated 1st October 1954) loves at the same time. The child, unable to avoid the of his may turn his fear toward A CASE OF MYSOPHOBIA presence father, something else that symbolises his father. Thus, as a substitute for the towering frame of his father, the Her neighbour were puzzled. They could understand child may develop an irrational fear of high places, or why 37-year-old Mrs. H. B. should keep her house acrophobia. spotlessly clean, but they could not make out why some- times she would get up in the middle of the night to In such a case, a person may overcome his phobia bv do so. being helped to recall and understand the painful memories which lie at the root of his obsessive fear. When she refused to accept a cup of tea from friends, This has been accomplished sometimes by psycho- and when she was seen to scrub the door knobs after analysis. visitors had gone, the doctor was brought in. It did not take long to diagnose her condition as mysophobia. But, particularly in far advanced cases, psychiatric a morbid fear of contamination. treatment is not always enough. A person's phobias may have spread to take in more and more situations, Such a abnormal fear is known as a persistent, phobia. until he finds himself unable to face everyday life. One authority has estimated that there are over 100 Dr. different phobias. Some of them are well-known Some years ago, Egas Moniz. a Portuguese Sur- because they have afflicted famous people. geon devised an operation to help the most hopeless patients. Known as prefrontal lobotomy, it involves The Italian dictator, Mussolini, for instance, suffered severing the connection between the drain's frontal lobes from a fear of confined spaces. This made him want (the higher brain centres), and the rest of thcbrairt- to live in monstrously large rooms. This affliction is This makes the patient incapable of sufering fears 'duel' known as claustrophobia. The famous English writer, anxieties. Opinion, however, is sharply divided on the' Samuel Johnson, was dominated by a morbid fear of benefits of this operation. Those opposed to it point' death (thanatophobia). out that it also makes the patient incapable of being a responsible human being.. More common is an irrational fear of disease. High blood pressure and cancer are favourite ailments of There is no ready-made solution for our countless people with this phobia. phobias, ranging from agoraphobia (fear of wide open spaces) to triskaidekaphobia (dread of the number 13)- Normally, the. bodily changes produced by fear are And even the medical scientists, in their search for of relatively short duration?just Ions: enough to help solutions, might get a mild case of what is perhaps the us to overcome a real or imagined threat. Fear sets strangest of all phobias?phobophobia. This, believe off an alarm reaction which makes our nervous system it or not, is a dread of having a phobia! (ISPS) 'wake-up' to the situation at hand. When the threat disappears, the bodv chemistry returns to normal. But in the case of prolonged fear, whether caused bv an emotional stress or a physical threat, changes in body chemistry may be so frequent and acute that thev may threaten our health. For example, soldiers subject- ed to prolonged fighting?and thus prolonged fear and anxiety?underwent marked changes of the blood. These changes were so acute that they had previously .