Uranophobia

Fear of heaven, also known by its Greek-derived name uranophobia or ouranophobia, is a phobia that makes its sufferer fear heaven or the sky.[1]

The origin of the word urano is Greek, meaning heaven, while phobia is Greek for fear.[2]

Causes

The causes of Uranophobia, as with other phobias, can be linked to a combination of external events and internal susceptibility - of brain chemistry and life experiences.[2]

Fear of heaven may more specifically be related to the dread of punishment in the afterlife.[3] Psychoanalysis would see this as an animistic projection of the threatening and punitive powers of the parents[4] - heaven or the sky being a relatively late stage in the detachment of the superego from the actual parents.[5]

Jewish tradition

Jewish tradition highly valorised the fear of heaven, seeing it as a positive force linked both to wisdom and to personal humility.[6]

Literary examples

W. B. Yeats in his poem 'The Cold Heaven' asked rhetorically whether after death the ghost is:

"stricken By the injustice of the skies for punishment?”[7]

References

  1. ↑ Kahn, Ronald Manual Doctor, Christine A. Adamec, Ada P. (2008). The Encyclopedia of Phobias, Fears, and Anxieties. Infobase. p. 270. ISBN 9781438120980. Retrieved 19 March 2012.
  2. 1 2 "Uranophobia Do you have a fear of Heaven or the sky?". common-phobias. Retrieved 1 January 2013.
  3. ↑ Kahn, p. 270
  4. ↑ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 196-9
  5. ↑ S, Freud, On Metapsychology (PFL 11) p. 423 and p. 400
  6. ↑ Y. Ginzburg, The Art of Teaching (2005) p. 156
  7. ↑ W. B. Yeats, The Poems (1984) p. 125

See also

Chicken Little Numinous

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, December 31, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.