Is there a name for a phobia of certain textures?
I have a friend with the following undiagnosed condition. If she sees certain textures e.g.: honeycomb, skin with boils, (in a recent film) skin with dozens of teeth stuck into it, she just doesn't hate it, it throws her into a prolonged state of mental distress. You can see in her face that she suddenly cuts off from the outside world and is deeply upset but can't communicate. She then recovers slowly over days but has flashbacks during this period.
Is this a known phenomenon with a name one can look up? I don't know if it counts as a phobia exactly but maybe it does.
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It actually does have a name. The term is trypophobia. However, it's not an officially recognized phobia. This is a summary of trypophobia from a rather extensive paper on the subject:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5811467/
This condition has not yet been recognised by diagnostic taxonomies
such as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Trypophobia usually involves an intense and disproportionate fear
towards holes, repetitive patterns, protrusions, etc., and, in
general, images that present high-contrast energy at low and midrange
spatial frequencies. It is commonly accompanied by neurovegetative
symptoms.
The first documented case of trypophobia was published by Rufo in 1998.
Rufo M. [The little girl who was afraid of holes]. Soins Pediatr
Pueric (1998) 18:3.
The article is in French.
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