*Far* OT: Phobia

[hw gray]

"But many people cannot pinpoint a specific event [that provoked a phobia]."

Of course "many people cannot." The claim that a "specific,"
*possibly-forgotten* event is necessary to induce and sufficient to explain
the existence a phobia is nonsense.

I believe that *some* *psuedo-*phobias are induced by some event that a
person remembers clearly. Trash-TV is full of such pseudo-phobics with
clearly-recalled back-stories who are cured - I have no problem believing
that - of their pseudo-phobias right before your very eyes, every day. But
to say that *all* phobias have such an origin, but, sometimes, the phobic
isn't able, for unknown reasons, to recall the triggering event is, at
best, atheoretic - the claim has an emergency exit - and, at worst, a lie -
surely, anyone claiming to be a scientist knows that a claim that can't be
disproved is no "theory."

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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