Fears and Anxieties--fear of colors

After presenting a dozen of what I called the "classical terms" for fears & anxieties, I discovered another thirteen which appeared before 1925. This essay may get to them (actually I don't). There probably are many others. Yet, the purposes of these first three or four essays on "Fears" is to show that the number of such classic "phobia" terms is rather limited, so that when we see around 600 of those terms today, we can see the explosion of terminology, if not fears themselves. Let's begin with some fun.

Fear of Colors

I was rather astounded to discover that one of the classic "phobia" terms was erythrophobia, not much used anymore, which means "Fear of the color red," or "fear of blushing." First attested in 1894, erythrophobia can also be associated with shame but was first associated with fears suffered by those having undergone cataract operations. Well, if you consult the "modern" Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears & Anxieties, you will discover that now we are afraid of a whole host of colors. It lists the word chromatophobia (fear of colors in general), leukophobia (fear of the color white), porphyrophobia (fear of color purple--I wonder what Alice Walker thinks about that!) and xanthophobia (fear of the color yellow). But, you see where this is going, of course. Why not use the creativity of modern wordsmiths to invent a host of other color fears? In fact, why not get the biggest, baddest box of Crayola crayons and develop fears for each one of the colors in turn? Here is a little history of those colors, from this website:

1903-- 8 colors
1949-- 48 colors
1958-- 64 colors
1972-- 72 colors, with several renamed along the way.
1990-- 80 colors, with sixteen added and eight retired.
1993-- 96 colors
1998-- 120 colors
2003-- 124 colors

Let's follow this line of thought for a little while. Whereas the "classic" colors in 1903 were brown and blue and red and orange and purple and green and violet and yellow, the colors became really complex in the more modern era. For example, in the 1998 iteration, here were a few of the colors added: "almond, beaver, canary, cranberry, fern, mountain meadow, antique brass, Caribbean green, fuzzy wuzzy brown, cotton candy, eggplant, pig pink, etc." Just think. If you can have a fear of the color yellow and call it xanthophobia (and I have no idea when this term was invented), why not have some clever linguist develop a word for "fear of pig pink," and prescribe a whole regimen of therapy for someone petrified of "pig pink"? But then you have further complications. What if you wanted to develop a term to capture "fear of torch red" (a color introduced in 1998), but then, to your horror, you realized that since 1998 "torch red" was given a new name, "scarlet." Just think about it for a moment. The fear you labored so hard to characterize, hiring a classicist to come up with a term for "fear of torch red," would all of a sudden be obsolete. You would have to come up with a term for "fear of scarlet" in order to be "current." I think I would then have to develop another term, which I would call "fear of failing to stay current with all the Crayola colors." It certainly would stalk me night and day.

Returning to "Normal"

Well, before I return to my 13 other "classic" phobia terms, I see one other problem with "modern" phobia terms, and that is that they tend to duplicate each other, without adding anything to our knowledge. Two examples of this will suffice. One of the classic phobia terms, which I will also mention in the next essay, is ochlophobia, which means a fear of crowds. This term is a good and solid one, being first attested as long ago as 1885. But then, in a 2003 quotation, an author says there are two other synonyms for ochlophobia: enochlophobia and demophobia. Isn't this just vanity and a striving after wind, as the Scriptures say?

Another example comes readily to mind. One of the fears mentioned in the 1989 Encyclopedia is blennophobia. It is defined as a "fear of slime." I think this is different from a fear of dirt, but I am not so sure of that. Actually, the "fear of dirt" is another one of our classic phobia terms--mysophobia. Mysophobia (the Greek word musos means dirt or defilement; not to be confused with mus, which means "mouse") was first introduced in 1879 in the following sentence: "Under the name of mysophobia.. I propose to describe a form of mental derangement..characterized by a morbid, overpowering fear of defilement or contamination."*

[*Actually the year 1879 saw a pretty rich harvest for "phobia" terms, as the words claustrophobia, mysophobia and cynophobia were all first attested then. A banner year for fears, indeed.]

Sounds like it could be synonymous with blennophobia, doesn't it? Well, then to add another word to the mix, the Encyclopedia gives another word for "fear of slime," --myxophobia. The OED informs us that the Greek word behind myxo is myxa, which literally becomes "mucus." But myxo is now used as a prefix to form scientific words "relating to mucus or other slimy material." Indeed, the Liddell-Scott big Greek dictionary says that blenna and myxa are synonymous--both pointing to a kind of mucous discharge.

There we are, back to slime, dirt, mucus, defilement. Not a smidgen of difference between them, I bet. Well, since I can't discover when blennophobia was actually introduced (the OED doesn't have it), I will "invent" the following history for it. Remember Dan Aykroyd's dumb movie called Ghostbusters (1984)? What was the major theme of that movie? Well, I don't really recall, but I do recall that all kinds of folks in NYC were getting "slimed" throughout the movie. Maybe some shrink went to Ghostbusters along with his classicist friend, and they decided, then and there, to invent a new term for the fear that people might have, after seeing Ghostbusters, of being "slimed." What word might they choose? Well, mysophobia was taken. All signs point to blennophobia as the word. I wonder if it is any more sophisticated than that?

Conclusion

Well, I see I have gotten to the end of another essay without giving you my new chronological list of 25 "classical" phobias. Let's now turn to that.

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