Fear of Being Stared At
Scopophobia
The psychiatric journal The Alienist and Neurologist named it in 1906, and the description it printed has not been bettered since. What the writers had observed in asylums was a shamefacedness bound up with being looked at, and the phrase they settled on for it was "a morbid dread of being seen".
The gradation they set out is what makes the passage worth keeping. At the mild end a patient puts their hands over their face. Further along, they get out of the visitor's line of sight altogether wherever that can be managed. The writers also recorded it as commoner in women than in men.
Later in the same paper the definition widens, to a fear of seeing people as well as of being seen by them, and of unfamiliar faces particularly. That is a larger claim than the first and the paper does not reconcile them.
What makes scopophobia social and specific
Scopophobia is described as both a social phobia and a specific phobia: a specific occurrence inside a social setting. That is an unusual position and it explains why the term persists alongside social anxiety disorder rather than being absorbed by it. The trigger is not the social situation but one event within it, the moment attention arrives.
The triggering situations overlap heavily with social anxiety, being introduced to new people, being teased or criticised, and the source adds a smaller and sharper one: answering a phone call in public.
One physical detail belongs to this fear and to no other in the catalogue. Excessive watering and redness of the eyes are listed among the symptoms, which puts the reaction in the organ the fear is about. For a person with epilepsy, the material notes, it may precipitate a seizure.
Where the fear has a cause outside the person
Most phobia writing locates the cause in the patient's history. Here the material also names a cause in the world: a scopophobic person may have a characteristic that genuinely draws attention, such as a physical disability, or a behaviour outside the norm.
That sentence deserves keeping, because it describes a fear of being stared at held by somebody who is in fact stared at. Whether an accurate expectation of scrutiny is a phobia is a question the source raises by implication and does not answer.
How psychoanalysis read scopophobia
Building on Freud's treatment of the eye as an erogenous zone, psychoanalysis linked scopophobia to a repressed fear of looking and to an inhibition of exhibitionism. Freud also called it a dread of the evil eye and connected it to the function of observing and criticising the self.
Shame is the motivating force in the readings that survive best: being looked at is equated with being criticised or despised. Adolescence intensifies both this and the fear of blushing, as awareness grows of other people as constitutive of a person's self-image.
The mirror term is scopophilia, an excessive pleasure taken in looking, typically at people undressing or nude. The sociologist Erving Goffman observed that shying away from casual glances in the street remained one of the characteristic signs of psychosis in public, which is a third position again: the same behaviour read as a symptom of something else entirely.
When the word scopophobia was named
Pierre Janet coined phobie sociale in 1903 to describe patients who feared being observed while talking, playing the piano or writing. Scopophobia was named three years later. Behind both, Hippocrates recorded around 400 BC a man of overwhelming shyness who loved darkness as light and thought every man observed him.
Which treatments the article should not list
Desensitisation here is unusually literal: the patient is stared at for a prolonged period and then describes what they felt. Exposure therapy is set out in five stages:
- evaluation
- feedback
- building a fear hierarchy
- exposure
- building onward through the hierarchy
The article then lists hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming and energy psychology among suggested treatments. The last two have no standing in the clinical literature, and their presence in a reference article is worth recording as a feature of the source rather than as information about the fear. Benzodiazepines, antidepressants and beta blockers are named for extreme cases.
Why the prevalence figure belongs to social anxiety
The prevalence given, over seven per cent of the population at any time and thirteen per cent across a lifetime, is attributed to United States government data for 2012 by way of the Social Phobia and Social Anxiety Association, and it is a figure for social anxiety rather than for scopophobia. No count of this fear on its own appears anywhere in the material.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Being Stared At
- Fear of BlushingThe two are described as closely related in the same literature and the avoidance is identical, since a person who fears being seen blushing avoids the situations where either could happen. Adolescence is named as intensifying both.
- Social Anxiety DisorderScopophobia is unusual in being classed as both a social and a specific phobia: the trigger is one event inside a social situation, the arrival of attention, rather than the situation itself.
- Fear of the Evil EyeFreud called scopophobia a dread of the evil eye, which is the same image reached from psychoanalysis rather than from folk belief. One fear concerns being looked at, the other what a look can do.
Common questions
Questions about Scopophobia
- When was the word first used?
- In 1906, in the psychiatric journal The Alienist and Neurologist, which described it as a morbid dread of being seen and noted that patients covered the face with their hands or escaped the visitor's sight where possible. Pierre Janet had coined phobie sociale three years earlier, in 1903, for patients who feared being observed while talking, playing the piano or writing.
- Is it a social phobia or a specific one?
- The source says both, describing it as a specific occurrence within a social setting. That is why the term has survived alongside social anxiety disorder rather than being absorbed by it: what triggers the fear is not the situation but the moment attention arrives inside it.
- What if the person really is being stared at?
- The material raises this without resolving it. It notes that someone with scopophobia may have a characteristic that genuinely draws attention, such as a physical disability or a behaviour outside the norm. Whether an accurate expectation of scrutiny counts as a phobia is a question the source poses by implication.
- Do the seven and thirteen per cent figures apply to this fear?
- No. They are figures for social anxiety, attributed to United States government data for 2012 by way of the Social Phobia and Social Anxiety Association. Nothing in the material counts scopophobia on its own.
- Why does the article recommend neuro-linguistic programming?
- It should not, and the entry records it as a defect in the source. Neuro-linguistic programming and energy psychology appear in the same list as exposure therapy and desensitisation, and neither has standing in the clinical literature. Their presence says something about the article rather than about the fear.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of BlushingCrozier showed a blush works because it cannot be controlled, so the fear targets the response that is doing the person good. Surgery for it has a regret rate.
- Social Anxiety DisorderThe definition covers positive evaluation as well as negative, which separates it from shyness. Attention to the diagnosis rose from 1999, when drugs arrived.
- Fear of the Evil EyeAmulets against it go back five thousand years, and the Latin charm used to deflect it gives the English word fascinate. Where it is absent is the map.
- Fear of Being PhotographedNo Greek word was ever built for this fear. English carries an adjective, camera-shy, and the material behind it describes shyness rather than cameras.
- Fear of DucksGary Larson invented it for a Far Side cartoon in 1988. It now has a medical-information page contributed by a physician, with a synonym list.
- Fear of EyesStaying away from eyes handles the moment and strengthens the fear, because every avoided encounter supplies a fresh reason for having avoided it.