gamophobic

the amount of information that i have learned in the past 15 days is amazing. ok, maybe it isn't as much as i would like, but it certainly is exponentially more than 16 days ago. and in the midst of learning all sorts of new info and remembering old stuff and am highly entertained by the profession i have choosen. I usally can not go more than an hour without laughing at something written in my study guide.

for example, today i was reviewing psychiatry, and let me tell you that it is super entertaining to learn the different manifestations of these disorders (or imagining people i know with personality traits similar to the disorders, because it is kinda scary to remember all the patients that we saw early in the fall semester this year). getting to the entertaining portion: among the examples for phobias are: agoraphobia (fear of open spaces) and acrophobia (fear of heights). things that you usually think of when you think phobias. Then there is algophobia (fear of pain). by this time, I am starting to think that the book is a little obsessed with the phobias that start with the letter "a" (or is that just a manifistation of my obsessive compulsive disorder or part of my adjustment disorder or part of an illusion or delusion [sorry, ramblings of what i learned today, i get a little excited sometimes]). but then, comes the funny one: gamophobia (fear of marriage; root gam = gamete). now that may be me just being a nerd, but i laughed sooo hard when i read that. the associate of gametes and marriage makes me think that the men who named this phobia were more scared of having children than getting married. an psych dictionary defined it as a morbid fear of marriage (love the use of the word morbid) {further research revealed that gamos = marriage, which makes more sense, but that makes me think that we named gametes after marriage, because we all know that babies (joining of gametes) only happens in marriage}. then i guess if you dont have gemophobia, you have Anuptaphobia- Fear of staying single.

i stumbled upon phobialist.com, with a whole list of phobias including:

the ones that make me sad:
geliophobia - fear of laughter :(
euphobia - fear of hearing good news;


funny ones:
Arachibutyrophobia- Fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of the mouth.
Cacophobia- Fear of ugliness.
Hellenologophobia- Fear of Greek terms or complex scientific terminology.
Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words.
Sesquipedalophobia- Fear of long words.
Lachanophobia- Fear of vegetables.
Levophobia- Fear of things to the left side of the body.
Metrophobia- Fear or hatred of poetry.
Nomatophobia- Fear of names.
Octophobia - Fear of the figure 8.
Philemaphobia or Philematophobia- Fear of kissing.
Philophobia- Fear of falling in love or being in love.
Philosophobia- Fear of philosophy.
Pogonophobia- Fear of beards.
Sophophobia- Fear of learning.
Testophobia- Fear of taking tests.
Venustraphobia- Fear of beautiful women.
and of course:
Phobophobia- Fear of phobias.