Exaggerated fear

Usage examples of phobia.

I contemplated food phobias, the more I became convinced that people who habitually avoid certifiably delicious foods are at least as troubled as people who avoid sex, or take no pleasure from it, except that the latter will probably seek psychiatric help, while food phobics rationalize their problem in the name of genetic inheritance, allergy, vegetarianism, matters of taste, nutrition, food safety, obesity, or a sensitive nature.

In political life, exclusionary legislation, attitudes toward race, the practices of medicine, law, and administration--the sciences contributing to and profiting from the Final Solution--may be understood as political actions, distinguished by delusional percepts regarding the status of Jews, their treatment, and the phobia of them.

From a purely behavioristic standpoint, if the phobic reaction is gone, then the phobia is cured.

The flatlander phobia is a bone-deep dread of being cut off from Earth.

The phobia of defilement allows the group to condone actions such as ghettoization, purging, and killing, which assure the integrity of the boundaries between pure and impure.

Was Mossman afraid of a gas attack or did he suffer from a Howard Hughes germ phobia?

All of us who lived through those days came out the other side mumbling under our breaths, quivering with twitches, tics, and phobias.

It is interesting that strong human phobias tend to be directed towards relatively harmless objects or vague, general situations--strangers, darkness, heights, insects, mice, meeting people, etc.

For social phobias and other situations requiring skills, the learning of useful skills is critical before or soon after reducing the fear response in the situation.

But, persons who were neglected as children are prone to develop phobias and panic attacks.

For Joel, whose life had always been ruled by his limitless phobias and fears, this was heaven on earth.

Wales afterward were full of anxieties and short breath, phobias and panic.

Soon he knew about the many forms of schizophrenia, as well as other psychoses, neuroses, paranoias, and an entire alphabet of phobias.

I don't know if it's some weird kind of aesthetic thing or a psychological phobia, or maybe even a physical fact of its existence the way we can't help flinching if someone makes like to punch us, for instance and I don't care.

We have lots of words for human-mind bugsparanoias, catatonias, phobias, neuroses, irrationalities.