Savory - Arachnida 1977

38
Arachnophobia
Many of the Arachnida inspire fear; scorpions are commonly avoided as
if they were more dangerous than snakes, Solifugae are shunned, and
countless people are terrified of spiders. These facts are interesting
because there is no obvious justification for so disproportionate, so widespread,
so illogical a horror, which may well have been an obstacle to
the progress of serious arachnology. vVhat is the reason for and the origin
of this fear?
What is fear? Fear is of two kinds. Subjective fear, or, in Spencer's
words, "the revival on a given stimulus of past experience of pain", is
the consciousness of the changes in blood pressure and muscle tone
consequent upon the activity of the adrenal glands, and is therefore
rightly described as "unfled flight". Objective fear is the actual secretion
of adrenalin, and is an unconditioned reflex normally elicited by
an unexpected noise, a sudden shock, or a loss of support, threatening
stability of posture.
The tonic reflexes which maintain equilibrium respond to tactile
impulses from the soles of the feet, to impulses of pressure from the
semicircular canals of the ear, and to visual impulses from the retinas
of the eyes. Here we are concerned only with the last of these. From
them there arises a tendency, well developed in the lower animals, to
keep the images of moving bodies on the same place in each retina.
This results in an orientation and movement of their bodies known as
rheotropism or rheotaxis.
It is dear that if the body is moved or the eye is turned so as to keep
the image of a moving object more or less stationary on the retina, the
of the background and surroundings must, at the same time, be
across the retina. This is exactly what happens during an
unexpected fall and the primitive response is a secretion of adrenalin to
fit the body to meet the sudden change of circumstances. This is fear.
Just as, according to the James-Lange theory of the emotions we "feel
38. ARACH~OPHOBIA 317
sorry because we cry", so do we feel frightened because of the physical
changes in blood pressure and muscle tension.
The sudden running of a spider across the floor, of a scorpion across
the tent-cloth or of a solifuge across the desert sand attracts the eye, and
as the attempt is automatically made to "keep the eye on" the moving
animal, images of the background pass across the retina. The reflex
response follows, and, since all motion is relative, the conscious mind has
no difficulty in projecting the origin of fear to the escaping creature.
This explanation of the phenomenon of arachnophobia has received
criticism during the past three decades, but little of the criticism has
been constructive, offering an alternative hypothesis.
During the same period, however, phobias of all kinds, and there are
many, have been officially included in the International Classification
of Diseases, and considerable advances have been made in understanding
and treating them.
Animal phobias, which include a fear of birds, moths, butterflies,
wasps, mice, snakes, cats and dogs, have usually been found to have
appeared first in childhood. When 18,000 children answered a BBC
question, "Which animal do you dislike most?", the snake came first,
with 27% of the replies, the spider second with 9·5% and well ahead of
the third animal, the lion, which scored 4·5%.
The childish dislike may persist into adult life, when it is sometimes
overcome by unprejudiced reason showing the patient that it is simply
silly; at other times it is allowed to develop into a serious phobia.
Statistics reveal that most of the sufferers are women.
During a period of 12 years in which I was concerned with countless
women students, I made a practice of asking them whether they were
afraid of spiders, and if so, why? Their replies fell into three groups, each
with its qualification: fear of black spiders, not of the gaily-coloured
ones; (ii) fear of large spiders, not of the little ones; and (iii) fear of
long-legged spiders, not of those with short legs. In every case the
answer provoked a second question: just how dark, or how large, or
how long in the leg must a spider be before it passes the threshold and
becomes frightening? Is there a critical value for each characteristic?
There was never a precise answer to any of these questions, but there
was unmistakably a general agreement that colour, size and legginess
are all contributory causes, and that most certainly movement cannot
be discounted: in fact it becomes clear that the phobia is complex and
no one explanation will cover all cases.
One particularly significant confession by a very clever woman
traced her fear back to a toy, a papier mache spider with legs of spirally
coiled wire. When the spider was hung up, all its legs trembled in a
characteristically purposeless manner, inexplicable and terrifying. To