#250: Ordinary Madness
There are so many things to fear in this world\u2014water, choking, dark forests\u2014and an equal number of things to obsess over\u2014books, grief, things themselves. In The Book of Phobias and Manias, Kate Summerscale collects 99 such fixations, from the fanciful (hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia, a fear of long words) to the debilitatingly real (acrophobia, a fear of heights). No matter if dressed in Greek clothing (koumpounophobia, the fear of buttons) or bluntly named (social phobia), these obsessions account for many of today\u2019s most common anxiety disorders. But Summerscale\u2019s case studies, spanning 14th-century France to the contemporary psychology lab, reveal that our obsessions\u2019 historical origins\u2014and our fervor for categorizing our differences\u2014tell us an awful lot more about modernity than our evolutionary past.
Go beyond the episode:
- Kate Summerscale\u2019s The Book of Phobias & Manias: A History of Obsession
- Listen to our previous interview with Summerscale about The Haunting of Alma Fielding
- Fear of the future is strikingly dramatized in Dorothy Macardle\u2019s neglected Gothic tale The Unforeseen
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