What is phobic neurosis or anxiety hysteria?

The first to talk about phobic neurosis was Sigmund Freud. For him it was part of the so-called “transference neuroses” and It manifests itself as a disproportionate fear, which arises in the presence of a specific object or a certain situation.

For Freud, phobia is that disproportionate fear, while phobic neurosis is the behavior towards that object that causes absurd fear. There are countless types of phobia. They are named based on that object that causes the irrational fear. It could be said that any object can become a source of fear in this neurosis.

One of the essential characteristics is that phobic neurosis appears in people we call “normal.”. However, the so-called anxiety neurosis is also frequently present. In the latter, fear appears at any time and is diffuse and invasive.

The stimulus and the phobic neurosis

For psychoanalysis the stimulus that triggers the fear reaction is only an apparent cause. That is to say, for example, if a person experiences a phobia of butterflies, it is not butterflies that he is afraid of. What lies behind this is a traumatic event that was forgotten.

Thus, the object that triggers fear in phobic neurosis is just a symbol of the real cause. For example, a child sees that his father is beaten, bleeds, and drops of that blood stain his dress. He may forget that fact and then develop a phobia towards blue shirts, since one like that was what his father was wearing on that occasion.

It must be taken into account that traumatic does not necessarily depend on the real severity of a situation. In the mind of a child, fantasy and reality often intersect and generate very strong emotional experiences.

For example, a child waits for his or her mother or father to pick him or her up from school. However, sometimes they take a long time to arrive. During this period, the child may fantasize that he has been abandoned. It is possible that in these conditions you become hypersensitive to harmless stimuli, such as a dog barking or an insect flying.

A psychological defense

Why in phobic neurosis is the traumatic situation forgotten and replaced with an object that symbolizes it? What do you earn from that? A situation becomes traumatic when it is sudden, unexpected and the person does not have, or does not believe they have, resources to face it.. In a word: you feel powerless in the face of threat or danger.

What happens then is that the mind defends itself from this absolute helplessness, changing the logical order of what happened. She takes the fear out of herself, so to speak, and projects it onto something external.

Keeping that fear inside is intolerable. Moving it outward is a strategy to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the situation. Forgetting is also a strategy to keep that extreme fear at a distance.

The phobic disorder

Sigmund Freud did not fully develop the theme of phobias and phobic neurosis. Currently, psychoanalysis not only speaks of a phobia when there is terror in front of a particular physical object, but also in front of circumstances or ideas.. There is a fear of going crazy, or getting sick, etc.

Current psychoanalysis points out that not all traumatic events generate phobias in childhood. These are related to specific anxieties of fear of the loss of the loved object, loss of love, or castration.

The clinical approach

Phobic neurosis is not the only entity in which there are phobias. These can also be a symptom of other types of problems and disorders. Sometimes they are part of an anxiety disorder, in which the anxiety is more constant and erratic. That is, there is not only fear in the face of a specific object, idea or situation, but in an imprecise way.

It is also possible that they are part of an obsessional neurosis. In these, anxiety is less and tends to become ritualized. For example, someone who is afraid of germs develops a series of rituals to defend themselves against them. Whoever has a phobic neurosis goes into paroxysm upon contact with a source of germs.

The characteristic of phobic neurosis is that the affected person always flees in the presence of the stimulus that generates the phobia.. Likewise, he continually experiences the desire to control the external world. In reality, he wants to keep under control what he has repressed.

As you see, psychoanalysis also addressed the issue of irrational fears and phobias. However, nowadays the cognitive-behavioral current is usually used, since it is more effective when it comes to working on those fears. Therefore, if you think you may be suffering from one of these disorders, do not hesitate to go to a psychology professional.

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