... the etiology of a phobia was made by Freud. He suggested that phobias occur due to the anxiety produced by the phobic's desire to seduce his mother (the Oedipus complex) conflicting with the fear of castration by his father. This consciously unacceptable conflict, and the anxiety caused by it, is instead displaced onto the phobic object (Freud, 1909, as cited in Rosenhan & Seligman, 1989). This suggests that the psychoanalytical interpretation views phobias as qualitatively different from normal fears. However, this theory has been criticised for being based almost solely on case histories and for showing little success when used to treat phobics (Rosenhan & Seligman, 1989). Compared to Freud's analysis of phobias the behavioral account is testable and furthermore, backed up by many case studies and experimental evidence (Davidson & Neale, 1990). Watson and Rayner (1920, as cited in Davey, 1997) showed that classical conditioning could produce phobic avoidance of ...

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