Sometimes a person experiences the strongest fear of certain objects, animals or people, and sometimes it happens that the cause of such obsessive fears is the closest people who do not realize what effect their words can have.
In order not to be unfounded, I will cite a note from the supplements to the Niva magazine for 1907, which tells about the unusual fate of one singer (the original style has been preserved):
“Maria Felicita Malibran Garcia, who was considered the most famous singer of her time (1808-1836) for her rare voice and outstanding stage talent, went through the singing school under the direction of her father, the tenor and composer Garcia, and made her debut in London as Desdemona.
Before the debut, the father, an ardent and extremely irascible man, who this time played the role of Othello, threatened his daughter that he would really kill her, and not just for show, if she did not live up to his expectations and did not perform her part flawlessly, both vocal and scenic and that for this purpose purposely stocked up with a well-honed dagger.
Evening came, and the young artist had a rare and outstanding success. But in the last act, when Othello sneaks up to Desdemona, who is resting in bed, with the intention of killing her, a piercing cry of the singer was heard throughout the theater, and the young girl, jumping out of bed like mad, swept across the stage right backstage.
The curtain had to be lowered as it was impossible to continue the opera. The young artist disappeared. Only two days later she was found in the yard, hiding behind a woodpile, half-dead from hunger and experienced fear. They took her home and only with great difficulty were able to calm her down.
Since then, the great artist could never play the role of Desdemona without fainting at the end of it, sometimes even for a very long time. That's how much her father's threat influenced her.”
The cerebral mechanisms leading to the formation of such persistent fears were once studied by I. P. Pavlov in experiments on dogs. We also remember from the school textbook that if you light a light bulb next to a dog before feeding, then after a while the light will cause saliva.
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After a repeated combination of the two events, the dog's brain by means of a "temporary connection" unites, connects these two facts - the lamp and the food. Seeing the lamp lighting up, the dog seems to guess that now it will be fed.
True, school textbooks do not say that Pavlov did other experiments as well. For example, he turned on the metronome, and then irritated the dog's paw with an electric current, causing a painful defensive reflex. Already after 1-2 combinations, the sound of the metronome evoked a negative emotion in the dog - it worried, whined and tried to escape from the machine in which it was fixed.
With a certain degree of reservations, it can be argued that with repeated repetition of the experiment, the sound of the metronome caused a strong fear in the dog. When she heard this knock (in the place of a dog, I would call it ominous! - Approx. Auth.), She seemed to have a presentiment that she would be shocked.
In fact, it is almost impossible for us to judge what the Pavlovskaya dog felt in those experiments, but you can easily imagine what you feel when you see a dental chair or the sound of a drill. Probably it is coldness in the chest, increased heart rate, shortness of breath, possibly cold sweat and weakness in the legs.
Thus, the circumstances of the place where we once experienced unpleasant emotions and in particular fear, in the future cause the same or very similar emotions.
For example, a feeling of fear provoked by cardiovascular disorders, coinciding in time with being in a square, stadium or other open space, can later, through the mechanism of a conditioned reflex, lead to agoraphobia - fear of open spaces.
If a person has a heart attack in an elevator or subway car, they may develop claustrophobia - fear of enclosed spaces.
At the onset of the disease, phobias arise by the mechanism of a conditioned reflex, but over time the conditions for the occurrence of fear expand. This feature of the dynamics of the phobic syndrome allowed N. Asatiani to distinguish three stages in its development. The first stage is characterized by the emergence of fear in a direct encounter with a traumatic situation.
For example, fear arises when traveling on the subway, where earlier the patient had a "heart attack", accompanied by a feeling of intense fear.
The second stage is characterized by the emergence of fear already while waiting for a meeting with a traumatic situation, that is, while waiting for a trip to the subway in our example.
At the third stage, fear arises with only one idea of the possibility of a psycho-traumatic situation (the idea of a trip to the subway) in a calm environment. In severe cases, it comes to the point that patients do not leave home and spend all the time in bed. Of course, in such cases, the intervention of a psychiatrist is required, only who can provide qualified assistance.
A. Adamovich and D. Granin in their "Book of Blockade" give an example of the formation of fear of water - aquaphobia in a woman who survived the Leningrad blockade:
“… We were all very afraid to die on ice. Why? Because we were afraid that we would be eaten by fish. We said that it would be better to kill us on the ground, to tear us apart into small pieces, but not on the ice. Especially me. I was a coward. I'm not hiding it, yes, coward. I was afraid that the fish would eat me. And since then I began to be afraid of water. And when I was a girl, I generally swam well. I was an athlete once. And then, after the ice road, I became afraid of water. I can’t even wash in the bath while sitting, I must just stand under the shower. I'm afraid of water - that's all my trouble."
It should be noted that not only conditioned reflexes, but also other mechanisms play an important role in the formation of obsessive fears. First, it may be a concern about a real but highly exaggerated danger.
Thus, the well-known Russian neurologist and psychiatrist S. Davidenkov wrote: “For example, the obsessive fear of out-of-sex syphilis infection is a very real danger brought to the degree of pathology, since out-of-sex syphilis can indeed be infected and must be protected from it. Similarly, objects of phobias such as insanity, cancer, colds, death, the possibility of drowning while swimming or being hit by a truck can actually occur in life."
On the other hand, obsessive fears are not always associated with real danger. For example, an obsessive fear of contracting a sexually transmitted disease sometimes develops in a situation where the patient is just about to cheat on his wife, but has not yet done so.
In such cases, syphilophobia can be understood as self-punishment for immoral tendencies. Such symbolism, with the substitution of real events for thoughts about them and experiences of possibility, is a very common occurrence with obsessive fears.
From the book The Psychology of Fear. Author: Yuri Shcherbatykh