Whether it’s this: Baby Toads Born from Mom's Back | World's Weirdest - YouTube
or something as otherwise cute as this: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
trypophobia is shared rather widely. Why is this so? What creates that repulsion/disgust/fear?
Are there other phobias which function in analogous ways?
When asking about such an obscure term (it’s not listed in Merriam-Webster), it would be helpful to explain what it is.
Given that the condition is not even generally considered to exist, an explanation not be needed. However, the Wiki article I linked to above does provide one hypothesis.
Serious answer given.
Miniature Golf courses?
Not listed in the DSM isn’t the same thing as “not generally considered to exist”.
In fact, is every single phobie listed in the DSM? Is there a “bird phobia” entry, a “statue phobia” entry, and so on?
I’ve a mild form of this phobia, so I can state with certainty that it exists. There might be medical conditions whose existence is disputable, but I can’t see how it could be the case with phobias : “I’m afraid of spiders” “No, you aren’t”. Huh? :dubious:
Also, for triptophobics reading the thread, there’s a picture you won’t like on the wikipedia article linked to.
I used the term because “being freaked out and squeaked out by hole-y surfaces, especially biological ones” is awkward. Titles gotta be short.
Google image returns this: https://www.google.ca/search?q=Trypophobia&num=20&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAWoVChMI96KVrLbzxgIVCqweCh0RNgAl&biw=730&bih=553 see if there isn’t a good number of people who find it particularly repulsive.
By the way, the wikipedia article states that the cause could be the association of clustered hole structures with danger, which frankly doesn’t explain much of anything.
And besides, I don’t associate these structures with danger. I find them deeply disturbing and repulsive, skin crawling repulsive. I have an urge to completely destroy them. A closed structure is normal. An open structure is normal. Clustered holes in a structure is totally unatural and repulsive and must be burnt, crushed, reduced to fine powder, excised if on a living being, whatever.
It’s sometimes said that it’s related to an instinctive fear of infestations and parasites (worms digging holes in flesh, for instance). It makes sense to me, especially since seeing it on a human body is the worst thing I can imagine wrt this phobia, even though I don’t like much clustered holes in a non organic structure, either (a pottery with holes intended to display flowers, for instance).
Thinking of it (instinctual reaction linked to a potential danger), one such structure that one could encounter in nature and that could be considered an actual potential hazard is a wasp nest.
Like this?
Could you link to a non-organic one?
Something like this doesn’t bother me as much, even though it’s clustered holes too:
and this doesn’t bother me at all:
And for some reason, that freaks me out just as much: [trigger] Camel's mouth - Imgur
imagining my hand in there is…unpleasant.
That was my first thought too, but I thought I’d remembered reading (perhaps here on this board) that there were no strong cases for any kind of specific instinct in humans that survives into adulthood.
This seems quite specific - I wonder if it’s learned, rather than inbuilt.
No. There is only “agoraphobia” and “specific phobia.” I do not know if any examples are listed of the latter, but they would not in any way be exhaustive.
As far as I know, it’s not really possible to say it doesn’t exist, seeing as it just describes a reaction, and we have studies and case reports and just anecdotes supporting those reactions.
What you can say is that it’s generally not really a phobia, as it doens’t cause the severe inability to cope with life. But a lot of what we call ____phobia isn’t really a phobia, by the DSM-V standards.
In the same way as so many people confuse a mild, or even severe, reaction to something with an allergy.
FWIW Snopes had an article related to this years ago… (creepy pictures of course)
What… what is that?
Hence the lack of tourism to Blackburn, Lancashire.
I know OCD types who would be freaked out from the irregularity of anything.
It’s considered to exist by only a small number of doctors and others, which means it is not generally considered to exist. (This doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist; however, it also suggests there’s not a lot of compelling evidence for it.)
Even if it’s not instinctual, it would be very easy to link honeycomb and wasp nests with danger, and from there generalize into anything with lots of holes.
Ok. Then :
-Can you give examples of phobias that are generally considered to exist
And :
-What is compelling evidence that a phobia exists besides people stating : “I’m irrationally afraid of X”?
I think he’s trying to distinguish mental disorders that exhibit as an irrational fear of something but are actually rooted in some other problem. Such a person may exhibit trypophobia but actually be suffering from a vitamin deficiency or brain tumor.
As has been noted, Agoraphobia is widely recognized.
Published studies in peer-reviewed journals, like this one of agoraphobia.
Again, I am not saying that the condition doesn’t exist, just that it is obscure and not generally recognized.
![[trigger] Camel's mouth - Imgur](http://i.imgur.com/mBmIVxi.jpg){kind=link}