By Jeffrey Lockwood
The human response to bugs is neither only organic nor easily cultural. And not anyone reacts to bugs with indifference. bugs frighten, disgust and fascinate us.
Jeff Lockwood explores this phenomenon via evolutionary technology, human background, and modern psychology, in addition to a debilitating bout with entomophobia in his paintings as an entomologist. Exploring the character of hysteria and phobia, Lockwood explores the energetic debate approximately how a lot of our worry of bugs will be attributed to ancestral predisposition for our personal survival and what kind of is realized via person reports. Drawing on bright case reviews, Lockwood explains how bugs have come to infest our minds in occasionally devastating methods and supersede even the main rational realizing of the advantages those creatures supply.
No you'll be able to declare to be ambivalent within the face of wasps, cockroaches or maggots yet our collective entomophobia is wreaking havoc at the wildlife as we soak our nutrients, houses and gardens in robust pesticides. Lockwood dissects our universal reactions, distinguishing among disgust and worry, and invitations readers to contemplate their very own emotional and physiological reactions to bugs in a brand new framework that he's derived from state of the art organic, mental, and social technological know-how.
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Extra info for The Infested Mind: Why Humans Fear, Loathe, and Love Insects
Example text
In addition, we should not conflate correlations with causes. 39 THE EMOTIONAL WILD CARD: ENTOMOPHOBIA What we fear has changed throughout history. , agoraphobia, the fear of being in places where escape is difficult or help is unavailable). Depending on the study, next comes one of the “specific phobias,” phobias that are triggered by particular objects or situations (an earlier term was simple phobias). 44 Of these, thirty-eight involve animals (such as amphibians, birds, chickens, dogs, fish, and even otters).
First, he saw insects as representing hidden intentions, as with the woman who dreamed of a colorful, human-sized hornet that grasped her finger and pulled her away from her home, but despite her fascination with him (the hornet was evidently male), she decided to stay to care for her child. Next there were wound dreams, with insects emerging as warnings, the precise nature of which depended on the species. , fire, crushing, scissors)—and the psyche’s destructive impulse was manifest in our waking hours as the egregious misuse of chemical insecticides.
40. , Anxiety Disorders and Phobias, chap. 7. 41. ” 42. Jim Stafford, “Spiders and Snakes,” lyrics available at Oldie Lyrics, http://oldielyrics. html (accessed October 25, 2011). 43. ” 44. Jack D. Maser, “List of phobias,” in Anxiety and the Anxiety Disorders, ed. A. Hussain Tuma and Jack D. com (accessed October 25, 2011). 45. ” 46. ” This estimate is based on the conservative assumption that half as many people fear insects as fear spiders. 47. ,” British Journal of Psychology 75 (1984): 37–42.