aerohygrophobia: Plants that are intolerant of high atmospheric humidity.
aeronausiphobia: An intensive fear of airplanes or the fear of vomiting due to airsickness. People who fear vomiting, or seeing others vomit, may also be anxious about being airsick themselves or of seeing others afflicted with the resultant vomiting. Those who have this phobia are anxious about the possibility of the plane flying through turbulent air as it rises and drops abruptly thus causing vomiting.
aerophobia: An excessive fear of wind, air, or an intensive hatred of drafts; as in cases of hydrophobia, hysteria, and other nervous ailments. There are times when this term is used to identify the fear of flying in aircraft.
agateophobia: Fear of becoming insane.
aging: gerascophobia, gerontophobia
agoramania: 1. Agoraphilia or a pathologic craving for public places. 2. A morbid dislike of being alone.
agoraphobia, agorophobia: An excessive fear of crowded, public places (like markets), or of the necessity of leaving the sheltering protection of home, parents, friends, etc.; considered the most common phobia known.
The agoraphobic syndrome is a complex phobic disorder that often occurs in adults. The major features are a variable combination of characteristic fears and the avoidance of public places, such as streets, stores, public transportation, crowds, and tunnels.
The original definition meant "fear of going out into open spaces such as streets or isolated areas". Now it is applied to many disabling fears, usually involving a group of fears centering around a distance from a safe place. As a result, agoraphobics usually fear leaving home, going into the street, into stores, occupying center seats in churches, theaters, or public transportation, crowded places, large rooms where many people are gathered, or being far from help.
Alexander Karl Otto Westphal (1863-1941), a German neurologist, coined the term agoraphobia because the most distinctive symptom of the condition was anxiety that appeared when a phobic walked across open spaces or through empty streets.
He described this as the "impossibility of walking through certain streets or squares, or possibility of doing so only with the resultant dread of anxiety."
A common characteristic of agoraphobia is a history of panic attacks in which the person experiences symptoms of extreme excitement, distortion of perceptions, and an overwhelming sense of imminent catastrophe, loss of control, or fear of public humiliation. As a result, the fear then develops to such a degree that the individual begins experiencing anxiety in anticipation of panic reaction. One's reaction is the avoidance of the feared situation.
Agoraphobia is derived from the Greek agora which means an "assembly" or "market place"; not "open spaces", as is commonly stated by some writers. Again, agoraphobia refers to the fears of streets and crowded places, not to "open spaces".
agraphobia: An extreme fear of sexual abuse.
agriomania: An "obsolete term" for a wild, ferocious mania.
agrizoomania: An abnormal or excessive desire to be with wild animals so one may live among them for purposes of studying them and even living among them.
agrizoophobia: An abnormal or excessive fear of wild animals.
agromania: A morbid impulse to live in the open country, in solitude, or withdrawal from society.
agyiomania: 1. An excessive desire to be on the streets; especially, busy ones. 2. An abnormal interest in streets.
agyiophobia, agyriophobia: An abnormal fear of busy streets; fear of crossing a busy street; excessive fear of public places where help might not be available or from which escape might be difficult to achieve. A form of sagoraphobia and related to topophobia (fear of specific places).
agyrophobia: An abnormal fear of being near streets or of crossing a street.
aichmomania: A morbid desire to be punctured, perforated, or pierced with pointed objects.
aichmophobia, aichurophobia: 1. An excessive fear of pointed objects, such as knives, nails, and forks. Symptoms of this phobia may lead to unusual eating habits, such as eating alone or without silverware, or to the selection of an occupation in which the phobic person will not have to see or use dangerous implements or their symbolic equivalents. 2. An abnormal or morbid fear of being touched by pointed objects, such as the finger or other sharp or slender-pointed objects.
aidoiomania: An abnormal preoccupation with sexual fantasies or activities.
ailuromania, aeluromania: Intense enthusiasm for having many cats around; sometimes, even when conditions are not suitable for their existence.
To study the abnormal is the best way
of understanding the normal.
-William James
ailourophobia, ailurophobia, elurophobia, aelurophobia: An excessive fear of cats; from Greek ailouros, "cat". In its most extreme form, this phobia may cause one to stay home to avoid encountering a cat in the street or seeing one even when the phobic is in a vehicle.
air, drafts: aerophobia, airphobia, anemophobia, pneumatophobia
Men will always be mad [insane]
and those who think they can cure them
are the maddest of all.
-Voltaire
airphobia: An abnormal fear of wind or drafts.
airplanes (vomiting): aeronausiphobia
akousticophobia: An abnormal fear of sounds in general or of some particular noise or sound.
albophobia: A fear of white people.
The function of fear is to warn us of danger,
not to make us afraid to face it.
-Anonymous
