Fear of fish or ichthyophobia ranges from cultural phenomena such as
fear
Fear is an intensely unpleasant emotion in response to perceiving or recognizing a danger or threat. Fear causes physiological changes that may produce behavioral reactions such as mounting an aggressive response or fleeing the threat. Fear ...
of eating
fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...
, fear of touching raw fish, or fear of
dead
Death is the irreversible cessation of all biological functions that sustain an organism. For organisms with a brain, death can also be defined as the irreversible cessation of functioning of the whole brain, including brainstem, and brain ...
fish, up to
irrational fear (
specific phobia
Specific phobia is an anxiety disorder, characterized by an extreme, unreasonable, and irrational fear associated with a specific object, situation, or concept which poses little or no actual danger. Specific phobia can lead to avoidance of the o ...
). Selachophobia, or
galeophobia, is the specific
fear of sharks.
[Galeophobia](_blank)
in medical dictionary.
Etymology
The term ''ichthyophobia'' comes from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
ἰχθῦς - ''ichthus'', meaning "fish" and φόβος - ''phobos'', "fear". ''
Galeophobia'' comes from the Greek γαλεός - ''galeos'', "small shark".
Phobia
Ichthyophobia is described in ''Psychology: An International Perspective'' as an "unusual" specific phobia.
[Michael W. Eysenck. ''Psychology: An International Perspective'', Psychology Press, 2004, p839, ] Both symptoms and remedies of ichthyophobia are common to most specific phobias.
American psychologist
John B. Watson
John Broadus Watson (January 9, 1878 – September 25, 1958) was an American psychologist who popularized the scientific theory of behaviorism, establishing it as a psychological school.Cohn, Aaron S. 2014.Watson, John B." Pp. 1429–1430 in ''T ...
, a renowned name in
behaviorism, describes an example, quoted in many books in
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...
, of
conditioned fear of a
goldfish
The goldfish (''Carassius auratus'') is a freshwater fish in the family Cyprinidae of order Cypriniformes. It is commonly kept as a pet in indoor aquariums, and is one of the most popular aquarium fish. Goldfish released into the wild have bec ...
in an
infant and a way of
unconditioning of the fear by what is now called
graduated exposure therapy:
In contrast,
radical exposure therapy was used successfully to cure a man with a "life affecting" fish phobia on the 2007 documentary series, ''
The Panic Room
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
''.
[Tryst Williams. Man cured of 'life affecting' fish phobia. ''Western Mail'', 18 April 2007]
Cultural phenomenon
Historically, the
Navajo people were described as being ichthyophobic,
Washington Matthews
Washington Matthews (June 17, 1843 – March 2, 1905) was a surgeon in the United States Army, ethnographer, and linguist known for his studies of Native American peoples, especially the Navajo.
Early life and education
Matthews was born in Ki ...
. Ichthyophobia, ''The Journal of American Folklore'', Vol. 11, No. 41 (1898), pp. 105-112[William H. Lyon. The Navajos in the American Historical Imagination, 1868-1900, ''Ethnohistory'', Vol. 45, No. 2 (1998), pp. 237-275] due to their aversion to fish. However, this was later recognised as a
cultural or
mythic aversion to aquatic animals,
[Howard M. Bahr. ''The Navajo as Seen by the Franciscans, 1898-1921: A Sourcebook''. Scarecrow Press, 2004, ] and not a psychological condition.
Fear of eating fish
The ''
Journal of the American Medical Association'' have published a
research paper addressing the fears of eating fish
"Time-Tested Guidelines for Eating Seafood"
, a presentation by Jane Brody (Personal Health Columnist, ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'') at the 2005 Seafood & Health Conference, where she coined her own term for fear of fish: ''pescaphobia,'' from Latin for "fish" among those who are concerned about contaminant
Contamination is the presence of a constituent, impurity, or some other undesirable element that spoils, corrupts, infects, makes unfit, or makes inferior a material, physical body, natural environment, workplace, etc.
Types of contamination
Wi ...
s, such as mercury, becoming accumulated in their food.
See also
*List of phobias
The English suffixes -phobia, -phobic, -phobe (from Greek φόβος ''phobos'', "fear") occur in technical usage in psychiatry to construct words that describe irrational, abnormal, unwarranted, persistent, or disabling fear as a mental dis ...
References
{{diversity of fish, state=collapsed
Zoophobias
Fish and humans