ABSTRACT
The fact that fear is ubiquitous in animal kingdom suggests that it is a “needed emotion”, that is, one that is important for the organism’s survival and functioning. For all living beings, including humans, the emotion of fear serves as a protective device; it warns them that some danger is approaching and they had better undertake measures to avoid it. Fear and anxiety share some characteristics. Both evoke a sense that something bad is about to happen. By itself, fear is a rational response and therefore poses few problems. When it gets fuelled by anxiety in a regressive blurring of external and internal realities, difficulties of clinical proportions begin to arise. The feared object/situation often represents an exquisitely unique and symbolic crystallisation of all the important determinants of the phobia, including the predominant impulse of threat against which the phobia is a defence. Although fear is ubiquitous in human existence, it does have a deep and complex relationship with culture.
