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Dr. Redfern gave the individual psychological explanation of phobia formation. He stated that no clear distinction was to be recognized between phobias, compulsions and hysteria. In his case history he
shewed how fears and anxieties arose at critical periods in the patient's life as safety devices, brought into action to keep the ego ideal intact.
Psycho-analytic approach to phobia formation was presented by Dr. Yates. She shewed in her case history how a phobia arose as one solution of the intra-psychic conflict produced by sadism which was aroused by frustration by a loved object. Fears and feelings which were intolerable could be worked out by symbolic disguise in the form of a phobia. The mechanism shewed how unconscious aggression against a loved person was transferred so as to emanate from the symbolic representation of the latter. Thus the patient's guilt feelings were allayed in that he became the victim of the phobia.
Dr. Young put forward the view, derived from the study of many phobic cases, that a certain arrest of psychological development, usually associated with marked organic defects, was common to all phobiques. A resulting impoverishment of life was also a striking feature in all phobiques whose phobia itself seemed to give them, in a negative kind of way, the stimulus which they lacked.