Fear of Everything
Panphobia
The word is Théodule-Armand Ribot's, from The Psychology of the Emotions in 1911, and the sentence he wrote to explain it is why anybody still uses it. He described somebody afraid of everything or of nothing at all, with the anxiety unattached to any one thing, drifting the way things drift in a dream, catching on an object for a moment and then letting go and catching on whatever comes next.
Fears everything or nothing is the phrase doing the work. A fear with no fixed object cannot be told apart from no fear of anything in particular, which is the problem phobophobia meets from the other side, and the anxiety attaches to whatever happens to be in front of the person for as long as it happens to be there.
Where the word panphobia comes from
Pan is the Greek for all, and panphobia is built from it. But the same root gives panic, and there the pan is a different one: the unpleasant state inflicted by the intervention of the god Pan.
Pan is a human and animal hybrid who appeared as the agent of panic fear, described specifically as the collective, animal-like disorder that seizes military camps at rest, particularly at night, and as the agent of a form of individual possession called panolepsy. According to Herodotus it was Pan who enabled the Athenians to win at Marathon by putting the Persians to flight.
Two etymologies meeting in one word, one meaning all and one being a god who causes armies to run, is a coincidence worth recording in a term for a fear of everything.
It has been argued that pantophobia is the more accurate name, on the grounds that it better conveys the non-specificity of a fear of all.
Where it is not
Look for it in the medical references and it is not listed as a phobia at all, and DSM-5 sets out no criteria for a fear that covers everything.
The nearest thing in the manual is generalised anxiety disorder, whose defining symptom is excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events or activities. That is Ribot's floating anxiety with the poetry removed.
Paranoia is the other neighbour: a state in which unknown threats are expected to come from anyone, with distrust potentially leading to a loss of touch with reality, and delusional disorder as the more severe form.
What it may be a piece of
The academic literature is described as pointing to panphobia as merely one component of more complex disorders rather than as a condition.
The specific case named is pseudoneurotic schizophrenia, diagnosable where panphobia appears alongside three others:
- pananxiety
- panambivalence
- to a lesser extent, chaotic sexuality
Those three companions are worth noticing: a fear of everything, an anxiety about everything, and an ambivalence about everything are described as arriving together, which suggests the pattern is a failure of the mechanism that assigns significance rather than an excess of fear.
What distinguishes those patients from people with generalised anxiety is stated precisely: free-floating anxiety that rarely subsides. They are clinically diagnosable as having borderline personality disorder under DSM-IV-TR, and no significant changes to that personality disorder were made in the transition to DSM-5, so the criteria are described as still appropriate.
What the entry can say
A fear of everything is not a phobia, because a phobia requires an object. Existential Dread is what the philosophers made of the same absence. What Ribot described is real and has been recognised under other names for a century, and every one of those names, generalised anxiety, free-floating anxiety, pananxiety, is an attempt to say the same thing without a Greek suffix implying a thing to be afraid of.
Ribot's sentence remains the best description available, and it is a hundred and fifteen years old.
Told apart
Often confused with Fear of Everything
- Fear of Fear ItselfBoth lack an external object, and they differ in what fills the gap. Phobophobia fixes on the internal sensations of fear; panphobia fixes on nothing for longer than an instant.
- Existential DreadBoth name a dread with no specific object, and one is treated in philosophy and the other in psychiatry. Ribot's floating anxiety and the absurd describe the same absence from opposite disciplines.
Common questions
Questions about Panphobia
- How did Ribot define it?
- As a state in which a patient fears everything or nothing, where anxiety, instead of being riveted on one object, floats as in a dream, and only becomes fixed for an instant at a time, passing from one object to another as circumstances determine. He coined the term in The Psychology of the Emotions in 1911 and the definition has not been improved on.
- Is the pan in panphobia the same as in panic?
- No, and the coincidence is worth keeping. The pan in panphobia is the Greek for all. The pan in panic is the god Pan, a human and animal hybrid held to cause the collective disorder that seizes military camps at night and a form of individual possession called panolepsy. Herodotus credits him with putting the Persians to flight at Marathon.
- Is it a recognised condition?
- No. Panphobia is not registered as a type of phobia in medical references, and DSM-5 provides no criteria for an all-encompassing fear of everything. The nearest entry is generalised anxiety disorder, whose defining symptom is excessive anxiety and worry about a number of events or activities.
- What is it thought to be part of?
- More complex conditions. The specific case named is pseudoneurotic schizophrenia, diagnosable where panphobia appears alongside pananxiety, panambivalence and, to a lesser extent, chaotic sexuality. Those patients are distinguished from people with generalised anxiety by free-floating anxiety that rarely subsides, and are diagnosable as having borderline personality disorder.
- Should it be called pantophobia instead?
- It has been argued so, on the grounds that pantophobia better conveys the non-specificity of a fear of all. Panphobia, omniphobia, pantophobia and panophobia are all in circulation for the same vague and persistent dread of some unknown evil.
Added 2026-08-23 · Revised 2026-08-26
Nearby in the catalogue
Related entries
- Fear of Fear ItselfWhat is feared is the sensation of fear, so the trigger travels with the person. Its treatment induces panic deliberately, with caffeine, carbon dioxide or adrenaline.
- Existential DreadMarcel coined existentialism and later abandoned it, Sartre rejected it before adopting it in 1945, and the nineteenth-century figures died before the word existed.
- CounterphobiaThe minority response to anxiety seeks the feared thing out. Fenichel's warning is the useful part: dismantling the defence is only the first step of treatment.
- Eco-AnxietyNot a diagnosis, and the researchers say so before anything else. Two people are credited with the name, and every figure in circulation is self-described.
- Fear of ChangeCommensal rodents are thought to have evolved higher neophobia because humans kept inventing new ways to kill them. Two thirds of the food form is genetic.
- Fear of CrimeBetween a third and a half of people in England and Wales report worry about victimisation, and probing finds few worry about their own safety day to day.