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fear can be seen in our face and those changes in the face can, by themselves, increase fear reactions elsewhere in the body. In addition to the changes in appearance, there are internal changes within the body. In a matter of se conds after we perceive danger, our body’s resources are mobilized in the emergency reaction; these internal changes are the physiological elements of fear.

The other two elements to the fear response (emo tional and behavioral) are connected with feelings of dread, terror or panic and changes in the behavior. The person undergoes various emotional and behavioral changes. At such moments he feels queasiness and creep ing sensations. He can have butterflies in the stomach, which becomes tight and tense. Behavioral reactions also occur when we experience fear. They are characterized by our trying to escape, to avoid the situation. Some peo ple tend to freezing, others fall into aggression.

The degree of fear varies in different people and in different situations. Some people actually like to step inside a cage with a chair and a whip to teach lions tricks. Lion tamers probably experience some fear, whereas most of us would be terrified. Hence, we do not go into cages. Instead, we go to the circus or the zoo. This is considered normal behavior.

There is a range of dangerous situations, as well as a range of fear responses. We accept our fear response when it is in proportion to the degree of danger in the situation. But when the fear response is out of propor tion to the amount of danger, we label it abnormal, in short, a phobia.

Anxiety has the same four components as fear but with one crucial difference: the cognitive component of fear is the expectation of a clear and specific dan ger, whereas the cognitive component of anxiety is the expectation of a much more diffuse danger. “Some thing terrible might happen!” is the essential thought in a panic disorder or generalized anxiety disorder, whereas in phobic and post traumatic stress disorders

the typical expectation might be, “A dog might bite me” or “There are clouds in the sky; it might flood again.” The somatic component of anxiety is the same as that of fear: the elements of the emergency reaction. The emotional elements of anxiety are also the same as those of fear: dread, terror, apprehension, a lump in the pit of the stomach. Finally, the behavioral components of anxiety are also the same as those of fear: flight or fight is elicited. But the object that the afflicted individual should escape or avoid, or against which he should ag gress, is shapeless. Thus, fear is based, in reality, on an exaggeration of a real danger, whereas anxiety is based on the irrational, on a formless danger.

There are two fear disorders: phobia and post trau matic stress disorder and two anxiety disorders: panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. We will dis cuss the first fear disorder.

Phobia is an unusually well defined phenomenon, and there is little trouble diagnosing it correctly; it is a disorder about which much is known concerning its cause and cure. Let’s emphasize again that a phobia is a persistent fear reaction that is strongly out of pro portion to the reality of the danger. While fear is nor mal and a phobia is abnormal, they are both on the same continuum; they differ in degree, not in kind.

There is no question that phobias cause one to suf fer. They are maladaptive, since the individual’s activ ities are greatly restricted; they are irrational, since the sense of danger is out of proportion to the reality of the danger. Phobics make others uncomfortable, and their behavior is considered socially unacceptable. Phobias are out of the individual’s control, and pho bics want to be rid of their fear. Thus, phobias are clearly abnormal.

The most recent estimate of the prevalence of pho bias puts the rate at between 7 and 20 percent of the population with some phobic symptoms and about 1 percent of the population with severe phobias.

Prevalence is defined as the percentage of popula tion having a disorder in any given time and is con trasted with incidence which is the rate of new cases of a disorder in a given time period.

Where there are reports of such unusual phobias as fear of flowers (antho phobia), the number 13 (trisk aedekopbobia) and snow (blanchophobia), these are very rare. The most common phobias in our society are fear of places of assembly and open spaces (agorapho bia), social phobias, and three classes of specific pho bias: (1) fear of particular animals, usually cats, dogs, birds (most commonly pigeons), rats, snakes, and in sects; (2) inanimate object phobias, including dirt, heights, closed spaces, darkness, and travel; and (3) fear of illness, injury or death.

Let’s take animal phobia as an example. Animal phobias uniformly begin in early childhood, almost never beginning after puberty. While соmmоn in childhood, most animal phobias are outgrown by adult hood.

Animal phobias are highly focused: Anna may be terrified of cats, but she is rather fond of dogs and birds. Agoraphobic рroblems, in contrast, are diffuse, ranging over a great variety of situations. Untreated animal phobias can persist for decades with no period of remission, while untreated agoraphobia fluctuates from remissions to relapses.

Only about 5 percent of all crippling phobias and perhaps 15 percent of milder phobias are of specific an imals. The vast majority (95 percent) of animal phobias are reported by women: unlike agoraphobics, they are rather healthy individuals and the phobia is apt to be their only psychological problem.

Animal phobics sometimes can describe a specific childhood incident that they believe set the phobia off. Anna seemed to recall that her father had drowned a kitten. Dog phobias mау begin with a dog bite; a bird phobia may begin if a bird lands on a child’s shoulder.

Overall, about 60 percent of phobic patients can de scribe a clear precipitating trauma. But for the re maining 40 percent no clear incident, only vague clues extracted from the mists of childhood memory can be isolated. One child seemed to have developed a phobia by reading about a warrior dog in a fairy tale, and then hearing that a boy down the street had been bitten by a dog. Another child, already somewhat apprehensive about birds, was teased mercilessly with feathers by her playmates. In each case, there are a number of events, often several accumulating over time, that might contribute to the phobia. But uncovering the es sential events, if such exist, can be enormously diffi cult. Usually animal phobias are outgrown, but for un known reasons, a few remain robust and persist into adulthood.

Op.cit. ch. 8, pp. 189–202

dren, in which symptoms of fear, anxiety, inhibi tion, shyness and over at tachment predominate.

recognition that the fear is unreasonably excessive, and

(d) the fact that it is not due to any other disorder.

10. Fear j___ An anxiety disorder characterized by severe at tacks of panic in which the person is (a) overwhelmed with intense apprehension, dread, or terror, (b) experi ences an acute emergency reaction, (c) thinks he might go crazy or die, and

(d) engages in fight or flight behavior.

Exercise 6. Prepare dialogues around the following topics, so that one student will support the statement given and the other will put for ward arguments to reject it. Use the follow ing expressions to present your ideas.

As for me...

I agree with you...

On the second thought I think...

You could be right, but…

In a nutshell...

That’s true, but what about …

On the contrary...

I don’t agree that…

1.Almost everyone has felt depression, at least in its mild forms.

2.Depressed people clearly have more negative be liefs about themselves and their future than non depressed people. They have low self esteem, but this low self evaluation may not always be a distor tion.

3.Anxiety and fear are basically the same emotion.

4.Phobia is an unusually well defined phenomenon, and there is little trouble diagnosing it correctly.

5.Fear of number 13 is not an unusual phobia, but a kind of superstition.

Exercise 7. Read the text and fulfill the test.

MEASURING DEPRESSIVE SYMPTOMS

Aaron T. Beck of the University of Pennsylvania has developed the most widely used inventory of de pressive symptoms. Each of the questions describes one of the symptoms of depression, and each question provides a severity score of 0 through 3 for that symp tom. The person circles the answer that best describes how he or she feels right now. The symptoms divide into mood, thought, motivational and physical sets. The statements below show responses to eight of the twenty one in the short form of the Beck Depression inventory.

This test is designed, not as a way of diagnosing depression, but as a way of knowing how many symp toms are present and how severe they are once depres sion is clinically diagnosed. A high score alone is not diagnostic of clinical depression or mental illness. Generally speaking, research has shown that the aver age score ( for the totals of the numbers from the eight questions) in a North American college population is about 3 or 4, and students who score below this can be considered non depressed. Mildly depressed students typically have scores from about 5 to 9, and scores of 10 and higher suggest moderate to severe depression. If an individual scores 10 or more for a period of one or two weeks, it would probably be in his best interest to seek help. If he has serious or persistent thoughts of suicide, regardless of his total score, it is imperative that he seek aid.