Despite advances in the assessment and treatment of childhood phobias, little is known about their etiology. Rachman has proposed that phobias are acquired through three different pathways: direct conditioning, modeling or instructions/information. We evaluate the empirical support for Rachman's theory in relation to the origins of childhood phobias. Although we find support for Rachman's theor...

Studies on specific animal-phobias are typically focused on fear, despite the observation that anxiety often involves an aggregate of several emotions where fear could be the main feeling (Bartlett & Izard, 1972). Specific phobias are restricted to well-defined situations and they are not usually accompanied by the generalized anxiety, spontaneous panic, and depression that commonly trouble ago...

BACKGROUND Much of our knowledge of the role of genetic factors in the etiology of phobias comes from one population-based sample of female twins. We examined the sources of individual differences in the risks for phobias and their associated irrational fears in male twins. METHODS In personal interviews with both members of 1198 male-male twin pairs (707 monozygotic [MZ] and 491 dizygotic [D...

Evidence from twin studies suggests that genetic factors contribute to the risk of developing a fear or a phobia. The aim of the present study was to review the current literature regarding twin studies describing the genetic basis of specific phobias and their corresponding fears. The analysis included five twin studies on fears and ten twin studies on specific phobias. Heritability estimates ...

This paper considers the current empirical status of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) as a treatment method for specific phobias, along with some conceptual and practical issues in relation to its use. Both uncontrolled and controlled studies on the application of EMDR with specific phobias demonstrate that EMDR can produce significant improvements within a limited number of...

In recent years numerous disagreements and controversies have ensued over the place of Pavlovian or associative conditioning in the etiology of specific phobias and other fear-related clinical syndromes. A major source of disagreement emerged from clinical observations suggesting that environmental aversive conditioning events could not be identified for many specific phobias. Part of the contr...

BACKGROUND Comorbidity of chronic migraine (CM) with psychiatric disorders, mostly anxiety and mood disorders, is a well-recognized phenomenon. Phobias are one of the most common anxiety disorders in the general population. Phobias are more common in migraineurs than non-migraineurs. The clinical profile of phobias in CM has never been studied. METHOD We investigated the psychiatric profile i...

ABSTRACT This essay had as object of analysis the ‘gender identities/sexuality’, from issues so-called ‘customs agenda’, in 21st century. The discussion proposed here is articulated to social needs health vast Brazilian territory. thought Foucault, Butler, Derrida, and other authors ‘post-structuralist’ spectrum, are used reflect on relationship between identity difference, its impact control o...

Via questionnaires, Uchida & Mori (2013) found “fake math phobias” among roughly one-fifth of a Japanese 7th grade sample who claimed they disliked math although they performed positively on an implicit association test. They should be rescued before they develop genuine math phobias. This study explores one possible way to do this. We examined 204 other 7th graders and found that 38 of them ha...