FEAR and PHOBIAS

by Prof Dr. Bilal Semih Bozdemir

In Psychological sciences, and in the matter of understanding people’s feelings and thoughts, some research methods are used to understand people’s specific behaviours. Among those methods, we can define observation as observing people naturally that’s to say in their normal form instead of observing behaviours in a lab, in order to understand them simply in the way they are. In this way, the advantage of observing people in their behavioural form and with the environment they’re living in resides in the people nature and the fact that people are different from one another.

Even with the few insufficiencies of this method its utilisation is considered to be necessary by the researchers. Although similar to the natural method, case studies are also used to observe people’s behaviours in addition to the techniques used by the researchers. In case studies, proofs of the general personal behaviour are somehow observed with movements. Investigative studies on the other hand, are important to get rid of the insufficiencies in natural observation and case studies. With this method the effects and lacks that are generally noticed in someone’s behaviours can be understood. Results given in percentage, help researchers in identifying the correct meaning of a person’s behaviours. Another important aspect of investigative works is the fact that pretty much data from relatively several people can be collected cheaply.

Because they give raw data about behaviours and the diversity, case, nature and investigation studies aren’t sufficient to explain the causes of behaviours. Another technique known as Correlational researches, as it is based on the principles of correlation, evaluates the data that are related. For instance, there’s a higher risk for people with some psychological disorders to have other medical conditions. Depending on how much people resemble that person the chances for him/her to adopt them are also high. There are several relationships existing among similar phenomena. Some other researches are carried out by way of evidence / trial-and-error. They help us to enlighten the previous experiments and simple tests made on that subject.

Behaviourism is one of the Psychodynamic Psychology schools. It is defined according to John B. Watson’s opinion about psychology. His behaviourism is based on the Russian physiologist Ivan Pavlov’s experiments.

A question arising from Pavlov’s experiments was if the conditioning could be applied to human beings or not. Watson proved that the conditioning was applicable to human beings too with an 11 months long research carried out on a baby. Watson showed that fears could appear and could be got rid of by conditioning.

Those works were a continuation to Pavlov’s experiments. One of Watson’s students Mary Cover Jones (1924), provided an “immunization” to a kid to his fear of rabbits by conditioning him. This is the method she used: While the rabbit was eating it was shown to the little kid and it was made to slowly approach him. This method resembles the technique used nowadays to make someone insensible to his/her fears. What else can be said about fear? Generally different things happen in our heads during the period it is thought our fears appear in childhood. The first fears appearing in our minds are fears from school, from darkness, the fear of being alone, the fear of being separated from our mothers and the fear of strangers.

It is of course possible to make this list a bit longer, if you know what we mean. First of all it should be specified that fear is a part of a normal development and helps a person to keep calm in front of dangers. Fear, from infancy to adulthood, is a frequently experienced situation so much that researchers proved that 90% of children during a period or another of their development had feared something. That’s why it’s not judicious to wait for kids to be absolutely or unconditionally fearless. Phobias: First of all it’s essential for us to separate fear and phobias. In order to call a fear a phobia, it should suit the following criteria:

- The kid’s fear is exaggerated or excessively high in regards to the situation he faced, for example because he fell once from a swing in a park he isn’t able to ride a swing anymore.

- The fact the kid can’t be convinced by logical explanations.

- The kid’s involuntary excessive fear or worrying.

- The deliberate avoidance of the feared situation. Phobias aren’t either specific to an age or continue in the long term. In some phobias, the causing event can be identified but in some several other cases it is impossible to do so.

Fears: Some fears are regarded as normal at specific ages. For instance, the fear of noise and of the loss of physical support is quite natural during infancy. The fear of strangers observed from the age of eight month to 1-1.5 year old is also accepted as normal. The commonly fear developed at age 5 of several imaginative structures such as witches and monsters is also a predictable situation. Here the thing we should pay attention to is the fact that some fears can appear at specific ages and should disappear after a certain period of time.

For example, if a kid aged 6 is still fearing of strangers this is a situation which needs attention. How are reactions to fear developed? One of the most important reasons of the binding or linkage of a baby to its mother is the capacity of the mother to decrease the baby’s fears. During infancy and the early childhood the reaction a kid has in front of a new situation is really influenced not to say determined by the mother’s own reaction. A kid for example, analyses the expression on his mother’s face when he is learning to ride a bicycle for first time. If the mother support her kid and allows him to gradually become self-confident and independent, that kid will think about riding bicycles as an interesting activity and focus all his mind to that activity.

On the contrary, the mother or the person taking care of that kid, during the period the kid is trying to learn, watches him with an anxious expression and continuously warns him of possible dangers, the kid instead of focusing on that activity as he should, he will just pay attention to the person who is more important than his own life and the anxiety related to that situation will increase with time. This will lead to the avoidance of the situation and the will of never again trying to learn it. We call this hesitative behaviour “a fear”.

As it appeared Fear is a behaviour of avoidance it has been identified also as a conditioning. We said before that being afraid of noises/loud voices is a normal thing during infancy. Let’s just suppose that in that period, there’s outside a great noise while a baby is having a bath. This can provoke a phobia of water or bath in that child. Worries are alongside with the avoidance and the conditioning another factor causing fears. Worries or concerns leading to fear are mostly observed when in the dark and been alone when falling asleep.

A kid begins to be aware of the social rules at almost three years old and above with his father and mother’s interventions. From that moment on he’s not anymore free to do everything he wants. As a result, the kid starts being angry with both his father and his mother who put him in that problematic situation, but he doesn’t want to express that feeling.

Besides he feel guilty because of that feeling of his. In order to get rid of that situation which is making him feel uncomfortable, he expresses his guilt and fear to the several scary pictures he previously found and that are representing his mother and father or in general the people representing society and rules.

These scary pictures could be a witch, a dream or a dragon. Before sleeping the kid is somewhere between consciousness and sub-consciousness. He’s now aware of the angriness he hid inside himself, he then enforces himself to keep on hiding them. At that time, actually he also needs the people causing him to have this feeling, but also supporting him and giving him confidence, his father and mother, by his sides.

When they’re near him he’s sure of their presence and their love for him and so he can sleep easily. Darkness is also a major factor of concern for a child and a cause to the feeling of loss of self-control. To come over that worry he may need again a support from outside. Another source of fear is being observed while one’s afraid, in other words, the fact that other people may discover or learn the fears by watching them.

For example, if a mother sees her child’s face white or colourless in a plane and she understands it is because the kid is panicked she may also start being afraid of planes.