Classification of fears

Classification of fears by Sigmund Freud is quite simple, it includes only two groups: real fears and neurotic. Real Fear Is a completely normal emotional process. It arises in a situation of danger and helps the body to mobilize to avoid this danger. A neurotic fear - this is what we used to call a phobia; it occurs when you collide with situations and objects that are not really dangerous.

Following Freud, other scientists began to divide fears into two groups. For example, there is a classification of fears constructive and inadequate (pathological). From this one can draw an important conclusion: not every fear is a phobia, as some think. In a situation of danger, fear is normal and even beneficial, because it provides self-preservation.

And here unreasonable phobia is already a mental disorder, with which it is necessary to fight. ICD-10 (International Classification of Diseases), for example, classifies phobias as class V (mental and behavioral disorders), a block of neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders. To this same block belong, for example, obsessive-compulsive disorder and neurasthenia. Phobias are classified by subject, for example, anthropophobia - fear of people, insectophobia - fear of insects, etc.

The border between fear and phobia can be quite thin. For example, in the area where there are poisonousspiders, fear of spiders is fully justified, because there is a real danger of being stung. But in those geographic regions where the chances of meeting a venomous spider tend to zero, the fear of spiders becomes a phobia, especially if a person is afraid not only of poisonous spiders, but of everyone.

There is also a classification of fears of Professor Yu. V. Shcherbatykh. He divides all fears into three main groups. Biological fears directly related to the threat of human life (for example, fear of fire). Social fears are associated with fear of changing social status (fear of losing their jobs, fear of public speaking). Finally, existential fears are associated with the very essence of man (fear of death, fear of open and closed space, fear of heights).

Some fears may be at the junction of two categories. For example, the fear of illness, on the one hand, hasbiological nature, because the disease is accompanied by pain and suffering. On the other hand, it is social fear, because the illness leads to forced switching-off from normal activity and isolation. And the fear of losing loved ones is simultaneously existential (the fear of unavoidable death) and social (close people are part of the environment, the change in which changes our social status).

The psychotherapist and psychiatrist BD Karvasarsky was proposed classification of fears by the "plot of fear". He shared fears in eight groups. The first group is an existential fear of space (claustrophobia, agoraphobia, acrophobia). The second group is social phobia (social fears). The third group is fears of diseases (nosophobia). The fourth is the fear of death (tanatophobia). The fifth includes fears associated with the sexual sphere. In the sixth - the fear of causing harm to loved ones and to oneself. The seventh group is "contrasting" fears (for example, the fear of committing an indecent act in society). Eighth group - fear of fear (phobophobia).

There is more than one classification of fears by various characteristics: fears of children and adults (or children's andparental), existential and everyday ... And existential fears, for example, can be conditionally divided into fear of time, fear of space, fear of oneself and fear of unknowing life. You can continue almost indefinitely, because the list of human fears is very large.

Why do we need a classification of fears? It is very important to be able to separate a well-founded fear that in a critical situation can even save a life, from a phobia that only poisons our existence. Fears need to be dosed, but with phobias you need to fight. And for a successful fight, the enemy should know by sight.