Collection · 10 entries
Rare and Unusual Phobias
Rare does two jobs on a phobia list and they are almost never separated. It can mean a fear that has been looked for and found in few people, which is a finding. It can also mean a word nobody has ever counted, which is not. Koumpounophobia is the first kind: Wikipedia puts fear of buttons at under one per cent of the United States, a national phobia charity quoted in a tabloid in 2008 put it at one in 75,000, and those two figures are around three million people apart. That gap is what an honest estimate looks like when the research behind it is thin. Zemmiphobia is the second kind. The 2008 encyclopedia of phobias defines fear of the great mole rat in six words, and every collected quotation of the term uses it as a joke.
This set holds the first kind and marks the boundary at the second. Several of these are rare for reasons that have nothing to do with how frightening the object is. Heliophobia is uncommon because the differential diagnosis removes most candidates, since several medical conditions make sunlight genuinely painful. Olfactory reference syndrome is rare and carries the worst outcome figures in this catalogue after anorexia nervosa. Others are rare in the literature rather than in life, documented through a single demonstration or a single failed dictionary verification. The order runs from the fears with case reports behind them to the one where the word is the entire record.
Hand-set, never alphabetical
The set, in order
10 entries
- Fear of ButtonsTwo published estimates around three million people apart, which is what a figure looks like when the research is thin.
- Fear of Body OdourRare, and carrying the worst outcome figures in this catalogue after anorexia nervosa.
- Fear of ParasitesNot a phobia at all: a delusional disorder with a diagnostic sign of its own, filed here because parasitophobia is one of its listed names.
- MorgellonsNamed in 2002 by a mother who rejected her son's diagnosis, from a seventeenth-century physician's essay.
- Fear of the SunRare because the differential diagnosis does most of the work: several conditions make sunlight genuinely painful.
- Fear of ColorsDescribed as rare, and most people the word is applied to react to one or two colours rather than to all of them.
- Fear of FishDocumented mainly through one demonstration, John B. Watson moving a goldfish bowl a little closer at each meal.
- Fear of FeathersA word that failed Wiktionary's verification process in 2010, which is the whole of its documentation problem.
- Fear of Fresh Air and DraftsRare in its original sense, which meant dread of a draught for two centuries before it meant anything about aeroplanes.
- Fear of the Great Mole RatThe boundary marker: six words in an encyclopedia, and every collected quotation of it is a joke.
Keep going
The other collections
- Words That Are Not PhobiasPhotophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, chromophobia. Where the suffix does scientific, political or sociological work instead of naming a fear.
- Medical and Dental FearsThe fears whose avoidance is itself the danger. Needles, dentists, doctors, hospitals and scans, and what avoiding each one costs the person avoiding it.
- Most Common PhobiasSpiders, heights, flying, the dentist, public speaking: the phobias most often called common, each with the prevalence figure the claim rests on.
- One Word, Two Different FearsAerophobia, phonophobia, basophobia: terms carrying two unrelated senses, with the collision traced and the usable meaning named.