The taxonomy · 13 groups
Categories of phobia and fear
This catalogue files its 284 entries into 13 categories, and every group prints the rule for what belongs there before it lists a single term. A term has exactly one home category and can be cross-filed into any number of others, which is how a fear of hospitals reaches the places group and the medical one at once: 259 of the 284 entries are cross-filed at least once.
Categories
13Each with a printed filing ruleTerms filed
284One home category eachCross-filed
259Also listed under another groupCollections
13The cut that ignores the groups- Abstract & ExistentialFailure, the future, change, infinity, being forgotten.
- Animals & CreaturesThe largest group in the catalogue and the oldest.
- Blood, Injury & MedicalThe one group whose physiology runs the other way.
- Food, Eating & SwallowingVomiting, choking, swallowing and specific foods.
- Nature & Natural EnvironmentHeights, deep water, storms, darkness and fire.
- Numbers, Words & SymbolsThe number thirteen, the number four, 666, long words, palindromes and mathematics.
- Objects, Figures & PatternsClowns, dolls, masks, holes, mirrors and buttons.
- Places & SituationsEnclosed spaces, crowds, bridges, lifts, tunnels and flight.
- Social & InterpersonalFears whose object is other people: being judged by them, being among them, or being without them.
- Sounds & SensationsSounds, touch, pain, texture, silence and light.
- Spirits, Religion & the SupernaturalGhosts, demons, God, hell, curses and the places associated with them.
- Technology & Modern LifePhones, machines, artificial intelligence, radiation and being unreachable.
- The Body, Illness & DeathDeath, dying, disease, contamination, ageing and the body itself.
The rule
Where a term is filed, and why it can appear twice
A category is chosen by what the fear takes as its object, not by how serious it is or how well documented it is. Fear of dogs files under animals whether the record behind the word is a clinical literature or a word list, and the label on the entry carries that difference instead.
One home category is a deliberate limit. A term that files in four places is a term a reader cannot predict, and predicting where something lives is most of what a taxonomy is for. Where a fear genuinely reaches into another group it is cross-filed, and the receiving category lists it under the terms that belong there without owning it. The full index ignores the groups entirely and lets the record label do the narrowing.
Collections are the other cut. A category answers where a term lives; a collection makes an argument that crosses the groups, such as the fears that are sometimes correct or the words with no recorded use. They are hand-set and ordered by hand, and a term can belong to several or to none. All 13 collections sit on their own page, and the A to Z lists every term without either structure in the way.
Common questions
Questions about how phobias are grouped
How many categories of phobia are there?
There is no settled number. A diagnostic manual sorts specific phobia into five types, animal, natural environment, blood-injection-injury, situational and a residual other. This catalogue uses 13 categories instead, because 115 of its entries rest on case reports or a historical record and 72 appear only in dictionaries and word lists, and neither group files under any of the five.
Can one phobia belong to more than one category?
Yes. Each term has one home category, which is the group its page belongs to, and any number of cross-filings into other groups. 259 of the 284 entries carry at least one cross-filing, and a category page lists both the terms filed there and the terms filed elsewhere that belong there too.
What is the difference between a category and a collection?
A category is where a term lives: one home, chosen by a printed rule, and every term has one. A collection is an argument that cuts across categories, hand-set and ordered by hand, and a term can sit in none or several. There are 13 categories and 13 collections.
Are these the categories a doctor uses?
No. The groups here sort words by what they name, not patients by what they have. Most of the catalogue would not appear in a clinical setting at all: only 31 of the 284 entries are named in a diagnostic manual, and the labels on every page say which is which.
Where does a fear go when it fits two groups?
Into the group whose rule it satisfies most directly, with a cross-filing into the other. The rule is printed at the top of every category page for exactly this reason, so a reader can predict where a term will land before opening it rather than searching two groups to find out.