ABSTRACT
The condition of agoraphobia is said by one of the foremost clinical researchers on the subject, Isaac Marks, to be 'the most common and most distressing phobic disorder seen in adult patients'. This chapter reviews the various bodies of literature of relevance to agoraphobia and panic from a particular, and necessarily partial, perspective, presenting a discussion structured around certain themes. It outlines definitions of agoraphobia, drawing particularly on clinical literature that accounts for, for example, its precipitants and prevalence, and attempts to expand overly narrow psychological definitions through references to the social and spatial aspects of agoraphobia. The chapter considers the phenomenology and embodiment of the condition, examining the various ways in which it is actually experienced by sufferers, and how this experience is often marginalized in clinical accounts. It provides a brief, clinical account of the 'defining' experience of agoraphobia – panic – before broadening the discussion to include non-clinical perspectives.
