Really Bad Ideas: Phobias

There is something rotten in the trend to label political or cultural views as

'phobias' that must be treated
Today, phobia is increasingly discussed as a transcendental force which can
apparently transform people into bigots and drive them to commit acts of verbal and
physical aggression. Many groups in society now claim to be the casualties of other
peoples phobias, and argue that they have been victimised by a phobic outlook.
Homophobia and Islamophobia are the best known of these recently constructed
conditions but there are many more groups who use the rhetoric of phobia to define
their victimised position in society. It seems a long time ago when our phobias were
confined to the fear of snakes, spiders or heights. The website Phobialist has a
rundown of over 500 different phobias, ranging from Didaskaleinophobia (the fear of
going to school) to Xyrophobia (fear of razors) (1).
The word phobia emerged in the late eighteenth century. It was originally used to
describe the fear of an imaginary evil or an overreaction to a real threat. In short, it
defined a response of irrational fear or aversion to a particular object or situation. The
term was absorbed into the emerging psychiatry profession around the turn of the
twentieth century, and in the process it became medicalised. In more recent decades,
phobia has been used as a suffix to denote negative attitudes towards certain kinds of
people. The word xenophobia (a deep antipathy to foreigners) served as a model for
the expansion of phobia, and what we might call the phobic imagination, into the
realm of human interaction and relationships. Over the past two decades, the use of
the word phobia to denote fear or angst about other people has become part of
everyday speech.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word hydrophobia (literally fear of
water, but also another name for rabies) was probably the model for the subsequent
formation of various phobia-linked terms in the English language. There were a small
number of such phobic terms in the seventeenth century, and a few more arose in the
eighteenth century. But they really grew markedly in the nineteenth and then exploded
in the twentieth century. The phobic imagination has risen alongside the therapeutic
culture, which tends to interpret conflict and troublesome behaviour through the
medium of psychology.
Today, emotional dysfunctions are said to cause social problems. From this
standpoint, unprocessed and unmanaged emotions are to blame for many of the ills
that afflict modern society. Even violence between nations, wars, are often said to
have an emotional cause these days. The early twentieth-century word xenophobia is
no longer simply a term used to describe an individuals view of foreigners; it has
become a therapeutic diagnosis of an individuals mindset. The various irrational fears
captured by the term phobia are now looked upon as merely a subsection of the
emotional disorders that dominate everyday life. The diagnosis of phobia has become

central to a therapeutic worldview that regards stress, rage, trauma, low self-esteem or
addiction as dominant features of the human experience.
The construction of the term homophobia set the path for the invention of other late
twentieth-century phobias-cum-prejudices. It should be noted that until the 1960s,
homophobia referred to the fear of men or aversion towards the male sex (2).
According to the OED contemporary usage of the word to mean fear or prejudice
against homosexuals dates from October 1969. The clinical psychologist George
Weinberg, who claims to have dreamt up the term, described it in the following terms:
Homophobia is just that: a phobia. A morbid irrational dread which prompts
irrational behaviour, flight or the desire to destroy the stimulus for the phobia and
anything reminiscent of it. (3)
The reclassification of homophobia as an emotional disorder, an irrational fear of
same-sex relationships, has paralleled a wider trend for looking upon prejudice and
conflict as the outcome of an individuals emotional deficits (4). When the European
Parliament passed a resolution titled Homophobia in Europe in January 2006, it
declared that homophobia should be seen as an irrational fear of, and aversion to,
homosexuality and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people based on prejudice,
similar to racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and sexism. The emphasis on the
irrational nature of homophobia is in keeping with todays tendency to treat
objectionable behaviour as a kind of personality disorder. And the diagnosis of
homophobia is not confined to apparently emotionally disordered individuals; even
whole nations can be found to suffer from the sickness. In April, members of the
European Parliament described Poland as hateful and repulsive for its alleged
homophobic political culture.
This successful linking of a hostile attitude towards gays with the emotional disorder
that is phobia has encouraged others to define themselves as the victims of phobia,
too. The coining of the term Islamophobia is the most successful recent attempt to
customise the homophobia tag for a new group of people: Muslims. The Islamophobia
tag gained currency in the 1990s. In 1996, the UK Runnymede Trusts Commission
on British Muslims and Islamophobia played a key role in framing anti-Muslim
prejudice as a form of irrational sentiment. By the early 2000s, and in particular after
9/11, the word started to be widely used throughout society. International institutions,
including the United Nations and the EU, embraced Islamophobia as yet another
prejudice that had to be condemned. Kofi Annan told a UN conference in 2004 that
when the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly
widespread bigotry, that is a sad and troubling development. Such is the case with
Islamophobia, he added (5).
Actually, the world in general rarely coins a new term. Rather, that is usually done
by claims-makers and advocacy organisations pursuing their own agendas. The world
did not need a new term; it could have got by well enough with already-existing

phrases such as anti-Muslim or anti-Islam prejudice. However, by drawing on the

successful creation of homophobia, the advocates of the new term of Islamophobia
could appeal to an established consensus around identity politics and
multiculturalism. Moreover, the constructers of Islamophobia, like those who rewrote
the phrase homophobia, could draw on the powerful therapeutic outlook that
dominates Anglo-American societies today. In our therapeutic culture, all forms of
verbal conflict are interpreted as being caused by individuals who are unable to
manage their own emotions inflicting emotional pain on to others.
The coining of new terms is not always a response to any rise in the threat of bigotry
or discrimination. In recent times, numerous lobbyists have tried to present their
groups as being the victims of some sort of phobia. So if Muslims can claim to suffer
from phobia, what about Christians? Some fundamentalist Christians recently
discovered the scourge of Christophobia. In a statement, they claimed that
Christians are being labelled, ridiculed, blamed, and legislated against which shows
there is an irrational fear and hatred of Christianity growing in all too many countries
today (6). Reverend Tristan Emmanuel, a Canadian minister, is also worried about a
rising tide of Christophobia; he believes that the kind of hatred being expressed
towards Christians in Canada today is probably a precursor of persecution, just as
depersonalisation of Jews in Nazi Germany preceded the Holocaust (7).
Others have written about Jew-phobia. Melanie Phillips, a columnist for the UK
Daily Mail, points to a rampant Israel-phobia and Jew-hatred. Her colleague,
columnist Peter Hitchens, prefers the term Judophobia, though he acknowledges that
he uses the term to annoy people who classify others as suffering from homophobia
or xenophobia (8). It is striking that there has been a shift from an ism antiSemitism to a phobia: Judophobia. Some in Europe are now challenged over their
Europhobia that is, their political opposition to joining the EU or adopting the
Euro currency. It seems that even the EU can be presented as the poor little victim of
irrational fears and prejudices on the part of its detractors. In other words, anyone who
is deeply sceptical of the EU must surely be driven by irrational fears.
More than a self-serving idiom
The trend for describing political and cultural attitudes as phobias is more than
simply a symptom of intellectual poverty. Through the prism of phobia, issues of
public life are reduced to being psychological problems on the part of individuals.
There are five very important reasons why we should reject the rise of this language
of phobias.
First, and most importantly, it reduces attitudes that are actually shaped by social
and cultural factors to problems of individual psychology. According to the
therapeutic worldview, power relations and cultural and social conflicts play only a
marginal role compared with the impact that the phobic individual apparently has. In

this vein, Martin Kantors Homophobia: Description, Development and Dynamics of

Gay Bashing actually pathologises the phobic individual. In earlier times,
homosexuality was pathologised as a form of psychiatric disorder, and the early
advocates of gay liberation argued vociferously against the medicalisation of
homosexuality. Today the situation has been reversed: the proponents of the term
homophobia, who are often gay rights activists, now explicitly medicalise their foes.
For Kantor, homophobia is the outcome of emotional disorders he claims it is linked
to obsessive-compulsive disorder, mood disorder, phobic/avoidant disorders and a
variety of other personality disorders. Evidently, homophobes are deeply disturbed
and sick people. Of course, there are prejudiced people out there - people who are
mistrustful and scathing of homosexuals, Muslims, blacks and others - but such
prejudice does not represent a mental health issue.
Second, the labelling of someones speech, attitude or behaviour as a phobia closes
down discussion. When someone is diagnosed as phobic, then they are seen as being
beyond the reach of reason or open debate. As the British writer Kenan Malik has
argued, in relation to what he calls the Islamophobia myth, the word Islamophobia
has become not just a description of anti-Muslim prejudice but also a prescription for
what may or may not be said about Islam (9). In recent years the term Islamophobia
has been frequently invoked to silence criticism of Islam. Criticisms of any aspect of
Islam are looked upon as expressions of a new form of racism. In reality, critics of
Islam are questioning the values associated with the religion rather than the racial
status of Muslim people. Today, promoting the concept of Islamophobia is about
setting up Islam as a criticism-free zone.
Recent claims about an epidemic of Islamophobia are based on very impressionistic
and subjective methodology. The Runnymede Trust Report is underwritten by
comments made by interested parties and young Muslims. The impressions of this
self-selected group of individuals were then recycled as facts throughout the report.
The report also says that opinions which are critical of Islam, and which in an open
democratic culture would be the subject of a legitimate debate, are actually closed
views of Islam and thus on a par with Islamophobia. Those who claim that Islam is
unresponsive to new realities, or is sexist, irrational and in some ways a political
ideology, are denounced as Islamophobic by the report. Virtually any criticism of
Islam can now be interpreted as Islamophobia. Worse, the use of this term erodes the
distinction between criticism of Islam and discrimination against Muslim people.
Apparently both a secular critique of Islam and prejudiced behaviour against Muslims
are now seen as products of the same Islamophobia.
In todays phobic imagination, it seems people are not allowed to have negative or
hostile views of other peoples lifestyles or cultures. The term phobia implies that if
you dislike a certain lifestyle then you must be an irrational bigot. In such
circumstances, criticising a way of life or a religion becomes an act akin to sacrilege.

Free speech and open debate are regarded as luxuries in a world where giving offence
is seen as an unpardonable sin.
Third, the promotion of phobias endows prejudices with a subjective and arbitrary
character. It is not what you say or what you mean that counts but how your speech or
thought is diagnosed. The diagnosis of phobia is highly subjective: it involves
interpreting, or guessing at, someones real motives. And once you have been
diagnosed in this way, it can be very hard to argue against it.
Consider the Runnymede Trusts claim that Islamophobia is widespread in the UK.
One of the advocates of this view, Dr Abduljalil Sajid, said Britain was institutionally
Islamophobic (10). The term institutional Islamophobia is significant: it selfconsciously copies the term institutional racism, which was invented by the 1999
Macpherson report into the police investigation of the murder of Stephen Lawrence.
In line with the current trend for psychologising every human experience, racism has
been recast as a semi-conscious psychological process. Thus, the influential
Macpherson report helped to codify feelings and emotion into law. Macpherson
defined institutional racism as a problem of the mind, arguing that it can be seen or
detected in processes, attitudes and behaviour which amount to discrimination
through unwitting prejudice, ignorance, thoughtlessness and racial stereotyping which
disadvantage minority ethnic people. The key word here is unwitting: an
unconscious response driven by unregulated and untamed emotions. In a world where
unwitting racism replaces real racism, every act has the potential to be diagnosed as
prejudicial or phobic.
Fourth, the tendency to label opponents with a diagnosis that is derived from
psychiatry ends up diseasing disagreement and dissent. The authoritarian implications
of doing this were clearly demonstrated in Stalinist Russia where dissidents were
often incarcerated in mental health institutions. In Western societies, phobic
individuals are not incarcerated they simply face being stigmatised and pushed out
of polite society. But how long before unwitting phobics are encouraged to
participate in anger management classes or pressurised to have their awareness
raised and remoulded?
Fifth, although the term phobia reduces human behaviour to a medical form, it is
more than a diagnosis: it is also a statement of moral condemnation. The homophobe
or the Islamophobe is a sick individual whose arguments and beliefs need not be taken
seriously. As unwitting phobics, they cannot help but behave the way they do. They
are clearly morally inferior individuals who lack the emotional resources necessary to
partake in contemporary society.
The psychological turn in public life does little to protect people who really are the
targets of bigotry and prejudice. Treating bigotry as a disease simply trivialises

conflict. It also discourages people from saying whats on their mind, and
participating in an open-ended debate.
(1) See the Phobialist website
(2) See Oxford English Dictionary
(3) See Geroge Weinberg, Love is Conspiratorial, deviant & magical
(4) This point is developed in chapters 1 and 3 in Frank Furedi, Therapy Culture:
Cultivating Vulnerability In An Anxious Age, Routledge, 2004
(5) See United Nations Press Release, Secretary General: Addressing headquarters
seminar on confronting Islamophobia
(6) See Frontline Fellowship: Christophobia
(7) See Media Christophobia is destroying democracy
(8) See Peter Hitchens, Israel is our front line whether we like it or not, Mail on
Sunday, 26 July 2007
(9) Kenan Malik, The Islamophobia Myth
(10) See Islamophia pervades UK report, BBC News, 2 June, 2004
First published by spiked, 21 May 2007