Phobias: Fighting the Fear
Helen Saul
356pp, HarperCollins, £7.99
Buy it at a discount at BOL

Buried Alive: The Terrifying History of Our Most Primal Fear
Jan Bondeson
320pp, Norton, £18.95
Buy it at a discount at BOL

What is normal or acceptable for one person may differ markedly for another. I once worked for a professor who said that the test for obsessionality was whether a person could lick the sole of their shoe. The rest of the medical team looked on in horrified dismay as he proceeded to carry out the test on himself, in central London.

Sometimes caution is protective, but not when it reaches the level of an obsession or phobia. Helen Saul's Phobias: Fighting the Fear is a cornucopia of information about these obsessive fears, charting the possible means by which our fears become phobias.

Saul describes the history of investigations into the causes of phobias, tracing theories on the subject back to Hippocrates, who dwelt on "the men who feared that which need not be feared", Aristotle, Descartes and Locke. Locke, an empiricist, believed that knowledge and memory are built on experience alone. If fear can be learned, might it not equally be unlearned? In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), he pre-empted modern psychologists using his own form of what is now called "systematic desensitisation". "If your child shrieks and runs away at the sight of a frog, let another catch it and lay it down at a good distance from him; at first accustom him to look upon it; when he can do that, to come nearer to it and see it leap without emotion; then to touch it lightly, when it is held fast in another's hand, and so on, until he can come to handle it as confidently as a butterfly or sparrow." This is a perfect description of the treatment most commonly used by psychologists today.

Locke's supposition that phobias can be learned was tested experimentally by J B Watson in the early 20th century. Saul recounts the terrible story of Little Albert, a baby in whom a phobia of a rat was induced by creating a jarring noise every time the rat was produced. Eventually the rat was presented without the noise, but the baby still cowered from it.

Some things are more likely to induce fear than others. Evolutionists believe that the things we fear today may have been fatal to our ancestors. Bites from spiders or snakes, stumbling in the dark or being cornered in a confined space could all have reduced a human's chances of survival. Yet the things that kill us in large numbers today - cars, cigarettes - rarely induce the same pitch of fear.

Saul's pursuit of this puzzle is admirably comprehensive, but at times the reader may regret the lack of any hierarchy of evidence. All opinions on the causation of phobias are welcome. No stone is left unturned, from genetics to flashing lights, ear problems and palpitations. There is much energy spent on the questions that perplex psychology, such as why women have worse phobias than men, and why most phobias are easier to cope with at night. There is little acknowledgment of the fact that many phobias are more treatable than they are understandable.

More elegantly composed is Jan Bondeson's discomfiting study of our phobia of live burial, Buried Alive. When someone has a real passion for their subject, the prose seems to flow. Usually this is a pleasure, but in this case the material is literally spine-chilling and richly illustrated with reproductions of horrible scenes, many of which unnervingly say, "from the author's collection". Bondeson is clearly attracted to the macabre. A professor at the University of Wales College of Medicine, he is the author of such works as A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, The Two-Headed Boy and The London Monster. Could these be read by the same people who read those glossy magazines about murders?

If you are not turned away by the book's cover - featuring a terrified person, clearly buried alive, peeping from his coffin - you might recoil from the contents list: "Winslow the Anatomist and Bruhier the Horror Monger", "Security Coffins", "The Signs of Death". But persevere. Buried Alive is a meticulously researched study of the fear of premature burial through the ages. Bondeson looks at myths and stories, together with yet more unsettling tales of verifiable premature burial.

His extensive account of changing methods of diagnosing death - from attaching bells to corpses or sticking them with pins to the more conventional detection of heartbeat, breath sounds and pupil contraction in light - is both interesting and horrific. The reasons for burying people alive also bear recounting. States of catalepsy, coma and stupor were all mistaken for death, and special coffins with trapdoors and windows were built for those who distrusted the abilities of physicians to tell the difference between death and life. This concern is still with us. Bondeson finally discusses the concept and diagnosis of brain death and whether modern medicine's criteria for death are sufficiently reliable. Even those with a hint of taphophobia will enjoy this compellingly written, outstandingly macabre book.

Feel the fear . . . An A-Z of phobias

Automatonophobia ventriloquists' dummies

Blennophobia slime

Coulrophobia clowns

Dishabiliophobia undressing in front of people

Enetophobia pins

Frigophobia cold things

Genuphobia knees

Hobophobia beggars

Isopterophobia termites

Japanophobia the Japanese

Katagalophobia ridicule

Limnophobia lakes

Mottephobia moths

Nosocomephobia hospitals

Ombrophobia rain

Paraskavedekatriaphobia Friday the 13th

Q ...is missing. As a sufferer of symmetrophobia the compiler is unable to provide this letter

Rhytiphobia wrinkles

Soceraphobia parents-in-law

Teleophobia definite plans / religious ceremonies

Uranophobia heaven

Venustraphobia beautiful women

Wiccaphobia witchcraft

Xylophobia forests/wooden objects

Y...is for you (unless you are a sufferer from autophobia, fear of oneself)

Zemmiphobia the great mole rat