Pistanthrophobia

Pistanthrophobia (pronounced piss-an-thruh-foh-bee-uh)

(1) The fear of trusting one's partner in a romantic relationship.

(2) A fear of trusting people because of dreadful past experiences.

1990s: A compound word, the construct being the Ancient Greek πίστις (pístis) (trust; faith in others; belief; truth), from the primitive Indo-European béydtis (equivalent to πείθω (peíthō) (I persuade) +‎ -τις (-tis) (the suffix added to verb stems to form abstract nouns or nouns of action, result or process)) + anthro- (a  (non-standard) alternative form of anthropo- (a combining form of the Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos) (man, human being) +‎ -phobia (fear of a specific thing; hate, dislike, or repression of a specific thing) from the New Latin, from the Classical Latin, from the Ancient Greek -φοβία (-phobía); it was used to form nouns meaning fear of a specific thing (the idea of a hatred came later)).  Pistanthrophobia is a noun; the noun plural is pistanthrophobias.

Pistanthrophobia is one of the “phobias” which owes its existence to the internet and may even have pre-dated the world-wide-web because some archived bulletin boards (there were several devoted to phobias which is something of a hint about the nature of the obsessives who stalked the boards at 2400 baud) includes entries for the word although it difficult to work out quite when first it appeared.  With the arrival of social media, self-help pages flourished and, of course, few need as much help as pistanthrophobics.  Whether, prior to the internet, there were many fewer phobias as exist today isn’t known but since the 1990s many more have been described, some obviously for jocular effect and while some seem only to state the obvious (atomosophobia said to be the “fear of atomic explosions”) pistanthrophobia surely is a helpful addition because it must be a common condition.  It’s not however a medical diagnosis and has never appeared in any edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), those who clinicians find to be pistanthrophobic handled with whatever is thought to be an appropriate diagnosis under the DSM’s five criteria for categorizing phobias: (1) animal type, (2) natural environment type, (3) blood-injection-injury type, (4) situational type & (5) other types.

Although originally applied to those who avoided romantic attachments because of a traumatic experience in a prior relationship, the term is also applied to those unable to trust others because of instances of rejection or betrayal.

Pistanthrophobia was first defined as the fear of being hurt by someone were one to enter into a romantic relationship and from the start the condition was thought something induced by a painful experience in a prior relationship.  The consequence of such traumas manifest as a fear of again suffering hurt and as an avoidance strategy, intimacy with others is avoided.  Like many phobias, the symptoms can vary in nature and extent but they may include (1) panic and fear, which can excessive, persistent, and wholly disproportional to the level of threat, (2) escape desires which typically manifest as a strong urge to get away from the triggering event or individual, (3) a shortness of breath (or hyper ventilation for those prone to panic attacks), (4) a racing heartbeat and (5) trembling and the onset of cold sweats.  Sufferers will change their patterns of behavior to the point of avoiding not only close contact but even casual conversations with anyone who might be a potential partner.  They will be seen to become guarded and socially withdrawn and at the very least, unresponsive to flirtation although it’s more likely they’ll become stressed and attempt to disengage from the interaction.  Flirtation is to a pisanthrophobe a threat and they become hyper-vigilant to the point where their heightened sensitivity will mean they misinterpret even benign conversations.  However, there are those who merely have no wish, for whatever reason, to enter into any romantic arrangements even when there’s been no preceding trauma and they are not pistanthrophobic.  The phobia is specific to the reactions and can exist even where there’s no history of trauma.

Vladimir Putin (b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999, centre) and Yevgeny Prigozhin (b 1961, noted multi-faceted Russian oligarch, left).

Mr Putin might find it hard again to trust others after his recent experience with Mr Prigozhin.  The president probably thinks he’s entitled to feel betrayed because Mr Prigozhin, as a billionaire oligarch and CEO of Mr Putin’s private army really was a thing of his creation and in sending a military convoy along the highway to threaten Moscow (a revolt, mutiny or insurrection depending on one’s interpretation), Mr Prigozhin was showing at least ingratitude.  Also not very trusting is likely to be Mr Prigozhin who may have little faith in the deal he agreed to: political exile in Russia’s neighboring vassal state of Belarus and an indemnity from prosecution in exchange for ending his quixotic revolt.  It’s certainly plausible he’ll avoid a Russian courtroom but his thoughts have probably turned to things such as accidents like falling from a tall building, being run over by several trucks, inadvertently ingesting poison or being exposed to a nerve agent like Novichok.  As Ernst Röhm (1887–1934; chief of the Nazi Sturmabteilung (the stormtroopers (the SA)) discovered in 1934, there can be consequences even for the things one hasn’t done but people think one might and as Mr Prigozhin probably impressed on Wagner’s troops more than once: “For everything you do there’s a price to be paid.”