ABSTRACT
Clinically, a phobia (from the Greek ϕóβoς, or “fear”) is a persistent fear of a situation or object, due to which the person invests disproportionate energy into avoiding or coping with that stimulus object or situation, compared to the minimal danger involved in it. The DSM-V (proposed), in its listing of anxiety disorders, refers to three very different types of situations using this same term: specific phobias, social phobias, and agoraphobias. Social phobia refers to fear of being with and being observed by others, and Agoraphobia involves a fear of leaving the person’s familiar safe area, often with additional social phobia and fear of the possibility of panic attacks in unsafe places. These latter two diagnoses have a more complex structure than simple phobias, and treatment by all methods has yielded less convincing research results (Roth et al., 2005).
