No, I am not referring to other bloggers, I mean Allen Shawn (son of William, by the way, former editor of The New Yorker, and brother of actor Wallace). He is deeply phobic, about many things, and his new Wish I Could Be There: Notes from a Phobic Life outlines the phenomenology of his fears. I learned:
1. The greatest thing he has to fear is fear itself.
2. The imprinting of painful memories, such as knowing to avoid a lit fire, can backfire and create persistent phobias. His phobias are remarkably specific.
3. There is a deep and poorly understood connection between phobias and the more general phenomenon of neurodiversity.
4. Self-awareness ain’t no guarantee of nuthin’.
5. He claims that people placed in concentration camps (Theresienstadt) became depressed, but that their phobias usually disappeared.
6. The author has a deep interest in atonal music, which supports my hypothesis that it is mostly the neurodiverse who enjoy this art form. Other people simply can’t hear the patterns, and furthermore the music gets on their nerves.
Half of the discussion is deadly dull, but it is still one of the more interesting books so far this year.
Wallace and Allen are brothers. Their Dad is New Yorker editor William. This looks like a typo but the wikipedia article sorted it out for me.
Thanks for this pointer. I’m ordering the half of the book that isn’t boring.
Are phobias considered a form of neurodiversity?
I wonder what the connection (if any) is between phobias and fetishes, particularly sexual fetish. It always struck me that some people have the most bizzare kinks, and as evidenced by the availability of porn, there are others who share them. Take bug crushing…bugs are a phobia for some, and a fetish for others. I have to imagine this is the opposite side of the same coin.
Comments on this entry are closed.