Phobia

Authors: Manseur N*

DOI: 10.23880/pprij-16000440

Volume 9, Issue 4

Abstract

Phobias, multiple and very varied, are usually referred to neurotic functioning. However, phobogenic processes are located at the crossroads of various pathologies of mental functioning, and certain phobias can reflect more archaic functioning. Phobias are linked to anxiety, an unpleasant affect intrinsic to the human condition. Although not all anxieties become phobias, it is because there is prior anxiety that a phobia is created. As soon as, invested impulsively, the ego and the object are distinguished, anxiety is experienced. If this can be linked to a representation, then, thus weighted, be projected outside, to become fear, fear of something, the place of perceptive projection becomes the phobogenic object. The subject can then avoid anxiety as long as he does not encounter the perception that has become phobogenic, and as long as the connection between anxiety and perception remains solid. The earliest phobogenic situations are those of solitude, darkness and silence, the princeps phobias of the small child that Freud describes in Inhibition, Symptom, Anxiety (1926). The child desires the presence of his mother and she is not there, nor anyone nor anything. Once the representation of the object of desire is repressed, anxiety remains. To populate the emptiness of the room that is suddenly too small or too large, the slightest perception becomes phobogenic; including the moon or the beating of the heart. Better a ghost, an imaginary mouse, than the deafening silence of no one. A shadow, a noise, however phobogenic they may be, come to populate the nothingness.

Keywords: Mental Illness; Phobia; Anxiety; Disorder

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