Objects, Figures & Patterns · 16 entries
Object and Figure Phobias
Clowns, dolls, masks, holes, mirrors and buttons. The figures in this group share a property worth naming: each is a human form with something wrong with it, and the research on clowns points at the hidden face rather than at the costume. The uncanny valley entry sits here for the same reason, and it is the only term in the group that came from engineering rather than from a dictionary.
The group also holds the site's clearest case of a word arriving before the evidence. Trypophobia was coined by an anonymous poster in 2005, circulated for eight years before a scientist used it in print, and now carries a real experimental literature that exists because the word did first. Fear of buttons runs the other way: two published estimates, under one per cent of the United States and one in 75,000, which are around three million people apart. The filing rule is the object itself, so a fear of the sensation an object produces files with sounds and sensations instead.
In this category
All 16 object and figure phobias
16 entries
- Fear of BooksThe clergy and the beadles held the legal and religious documents, and used them on people who could not read. Bibliomania is a hundred years older.
- Fear of ButtonsOne source puts it under one per cent of the United States, another at one in 75,000: three million people against four thousand, and nobody has checked.
- Fear of ClocksThe clean form is chronometrophobia. The spelling everybody uses has an extra letter and a Latin etymology invented to justify it, which does not work.
- Fear of ClownsThe 2022 survey behind the 54 per cent figure is reported without its authors, and Wikipedia files coulrophobia as a redirect rather than an article.
- Fear of DollsA horror director explains it better than the clinical record does: a human figure missing emotion, with eyes that stare and nothing behind them.
- Fear of FlutesOne explanation exists and it is that the flute is a phallic symbol. The clearest use of the word in print is as an example of a fear not worth treating.
- Fear of GunsCoined by a firearms writer in the 1960s, and Wikipedia files it beside gun nut under terms applied to opponents. Both sides of the argument own guns.
- Fear of HousesOikophobia has meant wanderlust, hatred of housework and cultural self-rejection. Domatophobia is the term left holding the literal fear of a house.
- Fear of ImagesCollinson separated hating images from destroying them, and dated the extreme phase to little more than one generation after 1580.
- Fear of MirrorsTwo current sources disagree about whether eisoptrophobia, spectrophobia and catoptrophobia are one condition or three. One patient gave up a driving licence.
- Fear of Sharp ObjectsThe general word keeps being used for needle phobia, which matters: one responds to ordinary exposure and the other belongs to the subtype that ends in fainting.
- Fear of Submerged Man-Made ObjectsMost sufferers name no trauma and no triggering event, reporting instead that symptoms arrived after a lifetime of ordinary contact.
- Fear of the Colour BlackHealth publishers define it as a fear of the colour black. Every citation before 1921 is about race, and Blyden preferred it to colorphobia as more exact.
- Fear of Touching a DoorknobA doorknob is the one surface in a building that cannot be routed around, which is where a contamination fear stops being manageable in private.
- TrypophobiaCoined on a forum in 2005, studied from 2013, listed in no diagnostic manual, and measured once: 16 per cent of 286 people rating a single photograph.
- Uncanny ValleyMori proposed it in 1970, and the sharpest account is about category: a figure in the valley reads as a person failing to seem normal, not a machine succeeding.
Keep going
The other categories
- Social & InterpersonalFears whose object is other people: being judged by them, being among them, or being without them.
- The Body, Illness & DeathDeath, dying, disease, contamination, ageing and the body itself.
- Abstract & ExistentialFailure, the future, change, infinity, being forgotten.
- Places & SituationsEnclosed spaces, crowds, bridges, lifts, tunnels and flight.
Common questions
Questions about object and figure phobias
Why are clowns frightening?
The research points at the hidden face rather than at the costume. A painted face is a human form with something wrong with it, which is the property every figure in this group shares, and it is what connects coulrophobia to fear of dolls, fear of masks and the uncanny valley.
Is trypophobia a real phobia?
It has a real experimental literature, and the order it arrived in is unusual. An anonymous poster coined the word in 2005, it circulated for eight years before a scientist used it in print, and the research was organised around the name afterwards. It is also reported as disgust and nausea rather than fear, which is why its classification is still disputed.
What is the fear of buttons called?
Koumpounophobia. It is one of the better documented rare fears and also a good illustration of how loose the numbers are: Wikipedia puts it at under one per cent of the United States, and a national phobia charity quoted in a tabloid in 2008 put it at one in 75,000. Those two figures are around three million people apart.
What is the uncanny valley?
The point at which a near-human figure stops reading as a likeness and starts reading as wrong. It is filed here rather than with technology because the mechanism is the same one behind dolls and masks, and it is the only term in this group that came out of engineering rather than out of a dictionary.