Phobia
UK £3.99,Canada $6.95,USA $7.95,
UK Publication April 2001
ISBN 9781840462449
Paperback
Buy: | Waterstones| Book Depository
Phobias and phobic phenomena are very common. We all experience phobias of a mild or severe kind, crystallising our fears and aversive behaviour around a particular object or situation. Certain typical phobias may be regarded as a normal part of childhood - fear of the dark, of wild animals, of intruders.
Ivan Ward guides us through the array of explanations about phobia. The behaviourists see it as a conditioned response to a frightening experience; the genetic explanation sees phobia as the evolutionary legacy of real environmental threats - snakes, spiders, lightning and so on. But the experience of severe phobia also contains something intensely irrational - why such overwhelming anxiety at the sight of a bird's feather, or the thought of crossing a bridge? It is around this perplexing core that a psychoanalytic explanation comes into its own. Using common experiences, horror stories, the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the cultural history of racism, this book illuminates the nightmare world of phobic phenomena in the individual and in society.
Ivan Ward is director of education at the Freud Museum, and a part-time lecturer at London Guildhall University. He is the series editor for Ideas in Psychoanalysis and author of Introducing Psychoanalysis, also published by Icon/Totem.
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Ivan Ward has a background in social sciences and anthropology. He is a lecturer at the London Guildhall University and the Director of Education at the Freud Museum, London.
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