1937-12-16 — Page 8

CHINA MATE-DE

Modern life-

Fear is one of

Who has not

WOULD YOU LIKE asks

fears that rob one, for the time being of happiness

Here the Daily Mirror Psychologist discusses these them, tells you how to deal with them

TAVE you ever visualised your

TO JUMP

He dare look im

Hboas huting through the air one, and is convince at his face i

to your death?

son-that he is grotesquely ugly. I must confess I once had a similar phobia.

psychologists have had some fun giving them names.

I know a man who dare not stan, on the parapet of a tall building. The very thought of heights leaves The variety of phobias is, of him limp and sweating with terror. course, endless. And word-coining

He suffers from acrophobia About one person in twenty-five suffers from a mild acrophobia. Joan Crawford is one. Joan also has a morbid dread of darkness (nycto- phobia), and dare not sleep without fights.burning.

Phobias are commoner than you might think

One young man could not marry his sweetheart for years because he dared not go to church. He had a phobia for confined spaces, was a Claustrophobiac..

For instance:--

Pyrophobia (fear of causing a fire).

→

From

HENRY HARRIS

Nelson's Column?

that psychiatrists call Hysteria. The tactless remark at an impression- mind-acting on the body-pro-able" age. A nurse who says: “See cuces a bodily symptom bike nery now, Johnny, that's what happens ous indigestion, paralysis, etc.

If and when the mind is put at

when you don't behave.”

Other phobias. (much more dif-

Aichmophobia (fear of pointed objects and sharp edges)....

Erythrophobia (fear of blushing). case again this bodily symptom dis- ficult to treat) are really an out- ward expression of desires that Taphephobia (fear of being appears.

That is why so many bodily com- have been repressed deep into the buried alive).

Ochlophobia. (Garbo's complaint Plaints are due to "nerves" They subconscious mind. For instance, are diseases of the mind more than many acrophobes fear heights be- they are diseases of the body. cause of a secret impulse to suicide. Last and rarest is the Compul- They are fascinated by yet sion Neurosis. Not fear or bodily frightened of this desire to throw symptoms, bu strong, almost uncon- themselves from a great height. trollable, impulses trouble the suf- Their phobia has, at any rate, ferer.

this value it does protect them For instance: To set fire to build- from their own impulses.

Similarly the not-so-rare pyro- ings, to injure others.

Or, in a very mild form to touch phobe is often found to have a

strong, perverse, subconscious de sire to set fire to things and gloat over the fames.

etc

of

His horror of fire delivers him from that temptation.

fear of crowds). Phobophobia (fear of being afraid or of seeming afraid). Until one day his closest friend Or More grotesque: was sworn in to keep the church Gephyrophobia (fear of crossing door wide open-come what might.. a bridge). And he was able to face the ordeal. Siderodromophobia fear of rail-

Claudette Colbert and Norma way stations). Shearer are mild claustrophobiacs.

Triskaidekaphobia (fear of being Others--Jeans. Harlow was one thirteenth at table) -have a fear of wide, open spaces,

And lots more like that for those lamp-posts, avoid pavement cracks, and will walk miles rather than who get their fun translating good.

Can a phobia be cured? cross. an open square or a wide English into poor Greek.

Certainly. But being an ailment. street (agoraphobia).

What are phobias, really? What

the mind it "must be cured I knew a man who would not eat do they signify? How can they be

through the mind.

Myšophobes (who fear dirt or in- before he had wiped his knife and treated?

Most of us have slight phobias. fection) are often people over- fork with a damp, grimy, antiseptic- When we overstrain our mind or soaked handkerchief.

fail to use it properly, we develop So slight that we are hardly aware whelmed by a profound sense of sin Nor would he open a door with- nervous complaints or "neuroses," of them except as our "pet aver and moral contamination.

stons" against this thing or that For "moral dirt substitute “phy- out wrapping this handkerchief of which there are three." round the knob. Mysophobia (mor- Commonest is the Anxiety Neuro. No need to treat these. Every phobia sical dirt,” and there you have the bid fear of dirt or infection) was sis--so called because anxiety or has its own meaning-never the explanation.

same for any two people and only It is less unpleasant to worry his.complaint.

fear is the principal symptom

Phobias come under this heading, a psychological investigation can about dirt than to worry about sin.

So they repress the idea of sin Nearly as common is the neurosis reveal it.

Some phobias are due to child- and worry about dirt. hood experiences.

The psychiatrist is usually able, One woman traced her claustro- to bring these forgotten childhood phobia back to an incident in child- experiences or these repressed sub- to the surface hood when she was punished and conscious desires locked in a cupboard for twenty of the mind. 2 minutes.

Once they are revealed to and Many people dread thunder or understood by the sufferer, the lightning because of some stupidly phobia tends slowly to disappear.

A famous humorist has a phobia for mirrors.

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THE

A

WORLD GOES BY

By "ULYSSES"

2

N insidious campaign with, which no figure if I sit here long enough it'll decent citizen will have any truck grow on me and save me the trouble of

is being waged to make everyone do picking it."

something all the time.

There is a moral in that little piece We are being trained like fleas. not of research which every wife will care- only to improve our minds, but to hop fally ignore. about the place morning, noon and night.

I protest

One hears nothing else but "How to "Statt Birds," "How to Play the Piano- la," "How to Keep Fit," "How to Suck Eggs" and so on.

The point is that the Grade A idler, the man who does nothing more than anything, has to learn to escape from o everyone before bliss can be his

Don't even be seen reading “Gone with the Wind." Strange women will come and ask you for opinions on it, What we want and for a suitable and you'll have to start thinking before fee. I am prepared to have a modest bang at it what we want is instruc- tion on How To Do Nothing At All out of office hours as well as during them.

you know what you're at.

Talking of this extraordinary book, which I've read quite a section of, here are some interesting conversational hooks, baits or what-nots about Mar- garet Mitchell, who wrote it.

The craze for culture, the nasty zest for being a likely had and eventually a handy man, is getting us all down. Mitchell was a journalist for six years,

Can journalists ever write? Mis

We are forgetting the glories of ab- Can you write a long work on milk "Gone with solute relaxation, of utter detachment as your only beverage?

Half the knack of learning true idle-the W" was written wholly on mik, ness lies in being able to escape your though it took seven years. neighbours.

Years more were taken checking up

An American magazine, “World Di-names, used in the novel so as to hurt gest," has some sound suggestions on no one's feelings Histoneal details: rascatibunits: were hunted as zealous this point

They quote the case of an Uncle Namice. both, who always claimed while on va The first chapter was written alto- cation that he was mad about collect-gether seventy times, and it's by no ing fungus, and this used to disappear means a short chapter. for days on end

And the reason the book was written Aunt Eulalie got suspicious, like was that Miss Mitchell had read all wives do, and one day she followed the books in the local library so her him. She didn't have to go far, for husband, suggested she should write. just around the first bend in the wood book herself to fill in time. She never was Uncle, sitting on a tree stump do dreamt it would be published. ing nothing, and thoroughly enjoying doing it.

"I thought you were supposed to be collecting fungus,” cried Aunt Eulalie

ith some heat.

Gone With the Winds is the

argument I can think

sheer idleness.

But there's one thing about idleness you can make it last even longer than amreplied Uncle Naboth Miss Mitchell's masterpiece.