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Demonomania - The feeling that you're possessed by demons. Only when I'm in my extreme PMS/PMDD phase of the month. The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the sphere of suffering shared, and in this case extended to the death march itself, there is no spiritual or emotional legacy here to offset any reader reluctance. In einigen der beschriebenen Obsessionen habe ich mich persönlich wiedererkannt. Das Buch konnte mir dabei helfen, nicht nur meine eigenen Ängste besser zu verstehen, sondern auch die Ängste anderer.
Plutomania - Excessive pursuit of riches. I wouldn't have become an archaeologist if so. (You're not allowed to keep the gold anymore, nowadays.) Mysophobia - Fear of defilement and contamination. Absolutely my dad, especially if excessive hand-washing counts towards this. Erythrophobia - Fear of blushing. Teenage and early 20s me suffered this; sometimes I started blushing before talking to someone because I was afraid I would anyway. It doesn't help that I have that Northern European rosacea-prone skin. It's an encyclopedia describing several manias and phobias, mainly focusing on the historical aspect - how they were discovered first, what famous historical people wrote about them or suffered from them - but also including more recent 'fun facts', treatments, and explanations.Two other observations: (1) there's, unsurprisingly, a big Freudian presence in the book, just showing how much of a perv that man really was. Please can we lay him to rest; (2) I don't completely understand why homophobia and xenophobia are in here, although the author does make a case for their inclusion. Still not completely convinced. With her eye for evocative period detail, her sensitivity to the quirks and poignancies of human motivation, and her brilliant storytelling skills, Summerscale has taken this corker of a case and made it as gripping as a novel. An engaging, unsettling, deeply satisfying read.” —Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet Ovophobia - Fear of/aversion to eggs. This seems like a rare one and yet I know someone who likely has it: they can't even stand the smell of them! GERASCOPHOBIA- fear of growing old “no more adulting thank you” my pharmacy director will stare at my face and say as if in awe”you don’t have any wrinkles just the tiny ones by your eyes you don’t even have them on your forehead” I’m 50 years fabulous. Also I keep telling my daughter to lie about her age so when I lie about mine it makes sense The book is divided by the alphabet. I find that a tad disappointing because I would have liked them separated by category like in the introduction. That would have been much more helpful.
Summerscale, author of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and other well-regarded books, lists 99 fears and compulsions, and the result is a peculiarly engaging book. Phobias are more common than one might think, with surveys suggesting that more than 7% of people will experience a phobia at some point. Phobias are often hard to define, although most medical researchers characterize it as an irrational fear that affects a person’s daily life. Some phobias have an evolutionary component. The fear of snakes, called ophidiophobia, makes sense given that many are poisonous. Much the same can be said for spiders and rats. However, the fears of feathers, popcorn, and balloons are odd. The fear of the number four, tetraphobia, is so deeply embedded in various Asian cultures that some hotels do not have floors or rooms with the number, apparently because in some of the region’s languages the word four sounds like the word death. As the author shows, the other side of the coin, manias, or the compulsion to act, can be just as disturbing. Hoarding falls into this category, but there are also communal manias. For example, Summerscale recounts the tale of “tulip mania” in Holland in the 1630s, when a collective obsession with tulip bulbs sent prices soaring to insane levels before crashing and ruining the economy. The author sometimes writes with her tongue in her cheek—e.g., in her descriptions of aibohphobia, the fear of palindromes, and nomophobia, the fear of losing one’s mobile phone—but she is clearly aware that phobias and manias can be serious psychological conditions. The author carefully treads the line between the oddness of her subject and sympathy for the people affected, and she notes that many phobias can be treated, usually by controlled doses of exposure. Public urination phobia - Speaks for itself. I think the term 'shy bladder syndrome' is more friendly- and much cuter-sounding. Aerophobia - Fear of flying. I've sat on a plane next to a family member who was incredibly nervous, and it made me weirdly unafraid of flying. I triple dog dare you to read this book and list your fears and impulsivities. It really made me think 🤔 I also know I will definitely be on medication for the rest of my life. Anschließend werden die einzelnen Obsessionen anhand von Fallbeispielen erläutert. Der Schreibstiel hat mir dabei sehr gut gefallen.Phobias and manias are a great way to investigate the weirdness that is the human mind. Where do they come from? Why do they infect us so thoroughly? I can't say that I know the answer to these questions any better after reading this book, but I do have some interesting factoids that I can share at dinner parties (like I attend those . . .). Ophidiophobia - Fear of snakes. Recently found out one of my cousins has this. Pretty understandable as far as phobias go.
Todas ellas están ordenadas alfabéticamente y en cada término describiremos su nombre,definición clara y concisa y también datos y casos científicos reales bastante curiosos e interesantes(muchos de ellos se remontan a diferentes siglos)de pacientes q las han padecido y cómo han podido o no superarlas. Aibophobia - Fear of palindromes. Yes, it might seem jokey to you, but now it's spoken into existence, and it might become a real problem, just you wait and see. The repetition lies in the fact that most manias and phobias overlap, and often their mechanics and origins are very similar. Likewise, treatment is more often than not the same; e.g., exposure therapy to treat fears. Sometimes, you could see Summerscale struggling to add some originality to the entries - which, I'll admit, she thankfully did very well most of the time (every entry with a funny and/or extremely disturbing historical story about weird Victorians made my mornings a little bit better). It also helped that the book is gorgeous-looking, and contains lots of quirky illustrations (that might trigger some people that actually suffer from these fears and manias. Free therapy!). Esta completa obra consta de 312 páginas donde la autora recoge a modo de “diccionario” diferentes fobias y manías( un total de 99 aproximadamente)poniéndole así nombre a todo lo q nos asusta y obsesiona. Acrophobia - Fear of heights. A lot of people I know have this, though they might overstate it. I thought I had this until I met actual people with actual fear of heights.
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What an utterly fascinating book! This is essentially an A-Z of all the neuroses in the world. Yes there are plenty of us scared of spiders (arachnophobia) and heights (acrophobia) but have you ever heard of phonophobia (fear of noises), trypophobia (fear of holes) and even koumpounophobia (fear of buttons)? Nope, me neither, but they’re all here. Claustrophobia - Fear of enclosed spaces. This is possibly the only one I actually really suffer from. Not extremely, but I have been in situations where I broke out in cold sweats and tears when I was in a small space. I was clearly more intrigued by what scares people than what they are excited by or feel compelled to do, but as the author writes at some point, aversion and attraction are two sides of the same coin. They both equal obsession. When you fear something to the point of it being a phobia, you are constantly on the lookout for it. In wishing to avoid it, you are constantly making it the center of your thoughts and experiences. And then let’s not forget about the mania - we all remember beatlemania in the 60s bit what about oniomania (shopping), nymphomania (sex), plutomania (riches) and of course something we could all identify with - bibliomania (books)! Allerdings zeigt das Cover auch meine persönliche Arachnophobie: Eine realistisch aussehende Spinne. Manche Leute könnten das Buch allein deswegen vielleicht gar nicht in die Hand nehmen. Es wirkt etwas makaber, aber ich finde es dennoch originell.
This handy sized book covers them all, it was enlightening and very eye opening. What I especially loved was the wealth of research that was clearly done to create this encyclopaedic compendium - each phobia or mania gives examples in history of each affliction, which was utterly fascinating to read about. He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions. hard-to-stop-reading histories . . . from the familiar (homophobia) to surprising fears of eggs, hair, silence and everything (pantophobia). Did you know that Oprah is afraid of balloons?”— Chicago TribuneThis fascinating compendium traces phobias and manias through their rich social, cultural and medical history. We learn that in the US, a third of all people with phobias suffer from a terror of cats (ailurophobia) or dogs (cynophobia). As well as well-known behaviours, Summerscale highlights less obvious fears such as hippophobia (fear of horses, made famous in Freud’s “Little Hans” case study) and coulrophobia (a morbid fear of clowns). The Fell Informative, witty, and unique . . . Summerscale, author of The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher and other well-regarded books, lists 99 fears and compulsions, and the result is a peculiarly engaging book.” — Kirkus Batrachophobia - Fear of frogs/toads. I know not one, but two people with this! Both say the same thing: they're terrified of the sudden movements of these animals, that they never know where they might end up.
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