What are obsessive phobias?
Obsessive fears (phobias) are intensive and insuperable fears seizing the patient despite the understanding of their senselessness and the attempts to cope with them. Phobias were traditionally considered within the framework of the obsessive conditions related to the disorders of thinking and reasoning. Obsessive conditions are situations when the person experiences some fears, doubts, ideas, inclinations, and actions “imposed” against his or her will. In spite of the critical attitude to these phenomena the person cannot get rid of them. Obsessive conditions do not necessarily evidence the mental disorder; they can occur in healthy people; for example, everybody knows about obsessive reiteration of some words (the so-called “hesitation words”), obsessive humming of a popular melody, etc.
The majority of experts mark out three basic forms of obsessional or obsessive-compulsive neurosis revealed as phobic, obsessive and compulsive syndromes. At the same time, phobias are understood as obsessive fears; under the notion of obsessions are understood compulsive thoughts such as obsessive counting, obsessive doubts, remembrances, inclinations, and attractions; compulsive syndrome includes obsessive actions, for example, tapping with a pencil on a table during conversation, tics, rituals and so forth.
It is considered that the regular studying of phobias began in 1871 when Westphal described the agoraphobia. He has specified that phobias emerge in the human consciousness against his will at an otherwise intact intelligence and cannot be intentionally “expelled” from the consciousness. The term “phobia” comes from Greek “phobos” and is translated fear, horror. Definitions of the notion “phobia” are extremely various. Some authors define phobias as a very painful experience of the fear caused by various objects and the phenomena. Other experts affirm that the phobia is the fear connected to certain situation or group of ideas and this fear does not arise in their absence. Original definition of phobia is that this condition represents a persistently existing irrational fear, which results in deliberate avoiding of specific object, activity or a situation causing this fear.
Generalizing the definitions of phobias, it is possible to pick out the following diagnostic criteria: obsessive character of the fear, clearness of the plot, intensity and persistence of the course, preservation of the critical attitude of the patient to his or her condition. Doctors, practicing the psychoanalytical approach, emphasize the irrational character of fear, its groundlessness and illogicality, paying attention to the fact that the reason that caused the formation of phobia is frequently displaced from the patient’s consciousness.
Phobic syndrome is a frequent finding in the in clinical picture of many mental disorders. Most frequently phobias accompany various forms of neurosises. Traditionally phobias are described within the framework of obsessive-compulsive neurosis alongside with obsessive thoughts, ideas, inclinations and actions). Among particular forms of neurosises with the predominance in their clinical picture of fear some authors mark out anxiety neurosis, expectation neurosis, and fright neurosis or affective shock neurosis.