ORIGINAL FRONTISPIECE
Man emerges from an artificial womb
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Copyright
Introduction copyright @ 2009 by David A. Beronä
All rights reserved.
Bibliographical Note
Phobia: An Art Deco Graphic Masterpiece, first published in 2009 by Dover Publications, Inc., is an
unabridged republication of the text of the work as originally published by Covici, Friede, Publishers,
New York, in 1931. In order to provide the highest quality reproductions, the plates are taken from the
1976 Dover volume Contempo, Phobia and other Graphic Interpretations, for which they were made
directly from the artist’s original paintings, under his personal supervision. This edition also contains
a new Introduction by David A. Beronä.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vassos, John, 1898-1985.
[Contempo, Phobia and other graphic interpretations]
Phobia : an art deco graphic masterpiece / John Vassos; with an introduction by David A. Beronä.—
Dover ed.
p. cm.
Originally published: Contempo, phobia and other graphic interpretations. New York: Dover
Publications, 1976.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9780486137940
1. Vassos, John, 1898-1985. I. Title. II. Title: Art deco graphic masterpiece.
NC975.5.V37A43 2009
759.13—dc22
2009005729
Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation
47032601
www.doverpublications.com
DEDICATED TO THE BRILLIANT POLYMORPHIC MEMORY OF
HARRY STACK SULLIVAN
John Vassos, 1973. Photo by Douglas Fedor.
INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION
DAVID A. BERONÄ
Prior to the Internet, whenever I entered a used bookstore, I would first locate the area where
illustrated books were shelved. With my interest in wordless books, it was an exciting moment–
though admittedly a rare occasion–when I found a work by Frans Masereel or Lynd Ward in those
dusty and dimly lit stores. On some visits, however, I did discover illustrated books by these two
artists, as well as many unfamiliar illustrators. The shelves of illustrated books were always packed
tight with editions from various publishers, reflecting the renaissance in book illustration from the
early twentieth century. This rebirth was primarily a direct result of the efforts of William Morris, the
founder of the Kelmscott Press, who, as part of the Arts and Crafts Movement in England in the late
nineteenth century, helped revive craftsmanship in bookmaking. Many publishers followed Morris’s
lead, with special attention given to the illustrated book, including George Macy, who started the
Limited Editions Club, and, later, the Heritage Press, whose mission was to “furnish to lovers of
beautiful books unexcelled editions of their favorite works; to place beautifully printed books in the
hands of book lovers at commendably low prices; and to foster in America a high regard for perfection
in bookmaking.”
One book of interest that was a standard title illustrated by a variety of artists was The Ballad of
Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde. It was during my search for different editions of this lengthy poem that
I discovered one illustrated by John Vassos, whose Art Deco illustrations filled me with a sense of
wonder. I soon uncovered copies of all nine books that he illustrated from 1927 through 1935,
including two other works by Oscar Wilde; three books written by John Vassos’s wife, Ruth Vassos;
Thomas Gray’s Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard; Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan; and
Phobia, which Vassos wrote as well as illustrated. When I found a copy of Phobia, I knew I was
holding in my hands a bibliophile’s treasure.
John Vassos was born in Greece in 1898 but spent his youth in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey),
where his father was the editor of a newspaper. John, who showed an early interest in art, drew
political cartoons for a rival newspaper, including one that was especially offensive to Turkish
readers. To escape their wrath, Vassos, at the age of sixteen, left the country on a merchant ship. He
spent five years at sea during World War I, once being rescued after a torpedo sunk his ship. He
immigrated to Boston in 1919, where he initially worked for the Boston Opera Company as an
assistant to Joseph Urban, famous for his production designs for the Ziegfeld Follies.
Vassos opened his own art studio, New York Display Company, in New York in 1924, winning
accounts with thriving department stores such as Macy’s and Saks Fifth Avenue with his eye-catching
advertisements and his distinctive hard-line medium of black-and-white gouache. It was during this
time, prior to World War II, that Vassos illustrated the nine fine press books he is noted for today.
After 1935, he moved from advertising to industrial design and was successful in designing early
television models manufactured by RCA (Radio Corporation of America), where he worked for forty
years. A founding member of the American Designers Institute (ADI) and the Industrial Designers
Institute (IDI), Vassos played a major role in the 1965 merger of IDI with the American Society of
Industrial Designers (ASID) and the Industrial Design Education Association (IDEA) to form the
Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA). Before his death in 1985, he oversaw the preparation
of a survey of his books, published by Dover Publications in 1976, which offered examples from all
nine volumes, long out of print, and included an informative foreword by P. K. Thomajan. In addition
to the remarkable illustrations, the original book’s design had the distinctive Vassos style: strong bold
lettering and a clear Art Deco style on the cover, with a simple embossed author and title encapsulated
by mechanical designs in silver leaf. The interior text was presented in an unembellished bold font
that set the stage visually for the illustrations on each facing page.
Vassos’s talent in industrial design was a perfect match for the prevalent Art Deco art movement,
which was strongly influenced by the Cubism and Constructivism that flourished during the Great
Depression. Art Deco works of art exhibited a mechanical style and were noted for their adoption of
early geometrical designs used in Egyptian and Persian art. Vassos integrated his creative design of
commercial products into his illustrations and book design, creating an unusual marriage of
exceptional art work and mechanized simplicity.
Phobia not only reflects Vassos’s extraordinary hard-line technique, but also provides an historical
document of psychology from an early-twentieth-century layman’s perspective. Vassos was well
acquainted with Harry Stack Sullivan, regarded as the “Freud of America”; in fact, Vassos dedicated
Phobia to him (“To H. S. S.”). In the original preface to his book, Vassos stated: “This is not a treatise
on psychopathology. I have written the text merely as an aid to the understanding of the drawings and
as a suggestion of some of the underlying factors by whose agency a phobia may be produced.” He
continued with his reasons for his visual interpretations by noting that “a phobia is essentially graphic.
The victim creates in his mind a realistic picture of what he fears, a mental image of a physical thing.”
Vassos introduces each phobia in bold text before the reader turns the page for the visual
interpretation. What I found fascinating was his focus on the “powerlessness” of the victims and the
underlying sexual repression that seemed pivotal in many of these maladies. Although the reasons
behind these fears may seem dated, such as those strongly associated with sexual guilt, his text
reflects the morals and cultural norms of his time. In this regard, even if the deep-seated reasons
behind these phobias have changed over the years, the power of our secret fears has not lessened. The
causes of our phobias may have changed, but the phobias’ essential reality has not diminished.
Beyond the psychopathology of these phobias in his text is Vassos’s art, which displays a brilliant
combination of sharpness and delicacy using black-and-white gouache. These two features, prevalent
in many pictures, pull the reader into the visual nature of each phobia. The gliding, symmetrical lines
and forms reflect his Art Deco style, displaying each arresting picture with strange effects of light and
darkness. For example, in “Ylophobia: The Fear of the Forest,” trees overlap in a transparent manner
that snags and encapsulates the victims. The color black, used in many of the prints, also frames the
visual focus; in “Astrophobia: The Fear of Storms,” the character’s expression of fear is intensified by
an emphasis on his black eyebrows and necktie set against a light patchwork of clouds and rain. The
real thrust of Vassos’s pictures, however, is expressed in the stark contrast between the shadowy
worlds of fear and the men and women living in these worlds. Vassos presents these fears not as a
feeling utterly beyond our own experiences, but rather as something familiar to all readers. We may
not all be living in the irrational or excessive state of fear displayed on these pages, but there is little
doubt that we would all admit to a familiarity with these fears–feeling frightened on occasion when
confined in a small space, crossing a crowded city street, being around animals or sharp objects,
walking in darkness or in a thunderstorm, or waking up at night and feeling the haunting chill of being
alone.
A few years after he concluded his book illustrations, Vassos designed one of the early television
cabinets for RCA, which was on display at the 1939 World’s Fair. Constructed of clear plastic, the
cabinet exposed the interior components in order to persuade viewers that the images on the television
screen were not coming from an inside projector, but through the airwaves. Beyond the creative
industrial design that this model represented, it also clarified Vassos’s own inquisitive nature and,
more importantly, reflected his personal curiosity about the internal emotional components of human
beings, which he so masterfully portrays in Phobia.
David A. Beronä is a woodcut-novel historian, the author of Wordless Books: The Original Graphic
Novels (2008), the Library Director at Plymouth State University, New Hampshire, and a member of
the visiting faculty at the Center for Cartoon Studies, White River Junction, Vermont.
PREFACE
I must begin by apologizing. I am not a psychiatrist, and my apparent presumption in publishing this
venture into the unreal world of phobia necessitates some explanation. However, I can only plead in
extenuation my keen personal interest in a subject whose fascination has claimed my attention for
many years. I here offer the results of that interest, in a series of drawings in which I attempt to
portray some of the fears by which mankind is harassed. The phobias I have selected for illustration
are only those which best lend themselves to my purpose and which have interested me most strongly.
Nor does the text pretend to any great authority. This is not a treatise on psychopathology. I have
written the text merely as an aid to the understanding of the drawings and as a suggestion of some of
the underlying factors by whose agency a phobia may be produced.
A phobia is essentially graphic. The victim creates in his mind a realistic picture of what he fears, a
mental image of a physical thing. The sufferer from acrophobia, for example, sees his body hurtling
through space, the aichmophobiac projects an image of himself in the act of stabbing; in this mental
picture the thing that he fears becomes actual, for all that its projection is purely imaginative. It is this
mental picture that I have endeavored to set down–the imaginal, graphic annihilation that the phobiac
experiences each time his fear is awakened. The illustrations should be considered first as a whole and
then in their component parts, to arrive at the complete meaning. They are intended to be inclusive–
that is, to depict both worlds of the phobiac’s existence: the physical and the imaginary, the actual and
the projected. The real world is replaced by the unreal as the pictorial pattern of the sufferer’s destiny
parades ceaselessly through his mind.
Usually, the layman makes no distinction between normal fear, complex, mania, and phobia. It must
be remembered that in the last, while the fear of an actual thing is the symbol, the fear itself is
psychotic and so abnormally exaggerated that it stops just this side of madness. The phobias here
presented are arranged more or less in the order of their intensity, progressing from the comparatively
mild nichtophobia, or fear of the dark, to the awful hypnophobia, the fear of sleep, removed from true
insanity by a margin so slight as to be hardly discernible.
The text attempts to convey something of the mood of each picture as well as to afford an explanation
(necessarily scant and incomplete) of the meanings of the various phobias. It must be borne in mind
that no unanimity of opinion on this subject has yet been achieved by the psychopathologists, and I
have tempered the extent of my temerity by adhering to a middle ground which, if not comprehensive,
at least lies within the bounds of probability. Phobias do not lend themselves to solution or analysis
with the same readiness of algebraic problems, although psychiatrists who pretend to omniscience are
unfortunately not lacking. We are dealing here with the imaginings of diseased minds, and many of
their manifestations are irreducible to law. Certain characteristics, however, seem to have been fairly
well established by one or another of the various schools of modern psychology–enough, at any rate,
to enable us to grasp the beginnings of comprehension.
At the bottom of all phobias there seem to be a few fundamental desires: the desire for sex-
gratification, the desire for suicide, and the will-to-power. The inhibitory restraints–whether social,
religious, or moral–which prevent the satisfaction of these desires, set up a fear in the individual of
some real object or condition that becomes the symbol of his maladjustment. There can be little doubt
that our heritage of the Puritanic concept of sex as sin has had much to do with the origin of many of
our phobias today. As primitive man trembled before the shafts of lightning–which aeons later were to
become the bolts of Jove–so we now tremble before an inherited moral code by whose tenets the
generative act is robbed of both meaning and pleasure. A grim retribution attends us, a punishment for
the enjoyment of what we still unconsciously regard as sin. We have rid ourselves, to a large extent, of
superstition and witchcraft, but we still do private homage to irrational terrors where once there was
ritual awe of the supernatural. The Christian peoples, whose Savior was born of a virgin, that is,
without “sin”, have for centuries maintained an unnatural ideal of chastity and have at length fallen
victims to the demands of their thwarted natural desires. The desire for suicide is present in nearly all
phobias because the phobiac generally feels an imperative need for release from his disordered life.
Yet because he fears death he also fears those conditions that are favorable to its consummation. So
also the exigencies of our modern social structure, with its tremendous premium on worldly success,
have taken their toll of sufferers–the weaker-spirited among us who cannot achieve the positions to
which they aspire or else who fear to make the effort that will segregate them from the comforting
obscurity of the crowd. Any of these fundamental impulses, acting independently or together, may
serve to produce one or more of the various phobias.
We know everything but how to live, and our success at everything else leaves us a prey to
monstrosities born within us. Our unsatisfied desires, at variance with our archaic concepts of life,
come to us wonderful in terror and temptation. A man who has a phobia fears a figment of fancy. He
desires what he doesn’t want to desire, and he fears the symbol of his desire even as he clasps it to his
breast. He cannot take what he wants nor can he cease to want it. Such is the law of diseased
symbolism, which is phobia.
For the preparation of the text I am greatly indebted to friends among the psychopathologists who
generously helped me to correlate my ideas and to check my conclusions; and to my wife, Ruth
Vassos, for her invaluable assistance in the actual writing. How my scientific friends may ultimately
assess the value of my encroachment of their preserves I do not know. I do know that they agree with
me that genius seldom springs from so-called normal minds, but frequently from those whose
tremendous imaginative power leads them along strange by-ways.
John Vassos
New York City
May 25th, 1931.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
INTRODUCTION TO THE DOVER EDITION
PREFACE
I. NICHTOPHOBIA - The Fear of the Dark
II. ASTROPHOBIA - The Fear of Storms
III. ZOOPHOBIA - The Fear of Animals
IV. POTAMOPHOBIA - The Fear of Running Water
V. YLOPHOBIA - The Fear of the Forest
VI. NECROPHOBIA - The Fear of the Dead
VII. ACROPHOBIA - The Fear of High Places
VIII. CLIMACOPHOBIA - The Fear of Falling Down Stairs
IX. BATOPHOBIA - The Fear of Falling Objects
X. DROMOPHOBIA - The Fear of Crossing the Street
XI. AICHMOPHOBIA - The Fear of Sharp and Pointed Objects
XII. MECHANOPHOBIA - The Fear of Machinery
XIII. AGROPHOBIA - The Fear of Open Spaces
XIV. CLAUSTROPHOBIA - The Fear of Enclosed Spaces
XV. MONOPHOBIA - The Fear of Being Alone
XVI. TOPOPHOBIA - The Fear of Situations–Stagefright
XVII. KLEPTOPHOBIA - The Fear of Stealing
XVIII. MYSOPHOBIA - The Fear of Dirt and Contamination
XIX. ANTHROPOPHOBIA - The Fear of People
XX. PHAGOPHOBIA - The Fear of Swallowing
XXI. SYPHILOPHOBIA - The Fear of Syphilis
XXII. HYPNOPHOBIA - The Fear of Sleep
XXIII. PANTOPHOBIA - The Fear of Everything
I. NICHTOPHOBIA
The Fear of the Dark
There are a few people who fear the light of day–for whom the sun is the enemy and who will not
emerge from their houses until the man-made lights are lit. But the almost universal fear of the dark is
intensified in hundreds of individuals into a real phobia. For them a dark room is actually filled with
spectres ready to mutilate, to rape, and to slay. The victim of this phobia probably suffers from an
inner conviction of guilt, a conviction that he has sinned in thought and word and deed; it is
punishment that he fears, and yet desires because it will make him clean again. In this common and
comparatively mild form of phobia is clearly demonstrated the conflict, (between the victim’s terror
of retribution for his self-confessed transgressions and his longing for the expiation that will liberate
him), which is characteristic of so many of the more complicated forms.
We have long had our childhood and adolescent fear of the dark explained to us by parents and
teachers as a result of dimly remembered bedtime stories about tigers who roam in deep jungles; or
else as a racial inheritance of our ancestor the caveman’s dread of the very real perils he constantly
endured. But this theory, while it undoubtedly explains a great deal, can be made to explain too much.
Some people shun the dark for actual and personal reasons. In their twisted minds they are guilty of
sin, and the formless blackness, that to the normal mind is only absence of light, is transformed into a
perilous other-world when conscience and nature are at odds.
I. NICHTOPHOBIA
The Fear of the Dark
II. ASTROPHOBIA
The Fear of Storms
Lightning, thunder, cloud-bursts, and hurricanes tore down the rude shelter of primitive man and
bowed his progeny in awe. This, according to the genetic psychologists, is the reason so many of us,
even today, still retain a wild terror of the more violent manifestations of nature. But then, why are we
not all victims of astrophobia? Stranger still, why do some of us feel, in place of fear, an actual
fondness for these visible signs of heavenly powers? Here again, it seems to me, the explanation
offered is too facile, too plausible, to be wholly true. Lightning is no longer the mysterious,
incomprehensible agency it once was; nevertheless, the astrophobiac finds no sedative for his terror in
the commonplaceness of electrical appliances. Let the lightnings begin to play, and however securely
he may be housed, he seeks refuge in the deepest cellar, in the darkest closet, the remotest hidingplace.
There would seem to be something wholly pagan in the composition of every phobia. The man whose
soul guards no secret chamber filled with thoughts and desires that do violence to the commands of
his god, has no such abject terror of the storm. We are not dealing here with any simple fear–the
disinclination to be struck by lightning which is the normal feeling of normal persons. It is very
possible that in the warped mind of the astrophobiac, as he hides in closets and under beds, the
lightnings of the storm are the bolts of an avenging God, striking surely for the one who has
transgressed His decrees.
II. ASTROPHOBIA
The Fear of Storms
III. ZOOPHOBIA
The Fear of Animals
A natural aversion in healthy people for mice or dogs need be no indication of zoophobia. But the wild
and ecstatic terror that grips some women in the presence of a mouse or before the amiable advances
of the house-dog tells a story of strange and perverse fancy. These horrors of animals can be so
astounding that they involve an element almost magical. I have seen a woman so morbidly afraid of
cats that she could recognize a feline presence the moment she crossed a strange threshold, and be
unable to complete her call.
Sometimes this phobia undergoes a transformation, and the animal feared is ruthlessly hunted down.
A well-known psycho-pathologist of my acquaintance has a tremendous aversion to cats (against
which not even his own precise understanding of his malady is proof), and destroys them without
compunction. He has been known to drive his car onto the sidewalk in wild pursuit of some
inoffensive tabby. Creatures of the insect world often inspire this strange fear in humans, and the
spider thus becomes a thing of loathing. It is possible that its habits of trapping and blood-sucking are
projected as somewhat violent symbols of suppressed desires.
The theory is that a victim of zoophobia fears a symbol of an unconscious desire. What one is
inhibited from loving may be transformed by the unconscious into an object to be hated. So, the old
maid violently afraid of mice shudders at the thought of contact with a man–yet desires it. The fear of
mice is merely a symbol for a quite other aversion. Conversely, at times it is the human that is feared,
and a fantastic attachment for a lesser creature springs up, giving outlet to the flames of desire. In
Balzac’s “A Passion in the Desert,” a female panther is the object of such an unnatural love on the part
of a man.
III. ZOOPHOBIA
The Fear of Animals
IV. POTAMOPHOBIA
The Fear of Running Water
Curiously enough, running water, which is the fear-symbol in one of the strangest of all phobias, is
also one of the powerful sedatory influences in the treatment of the violently insane. The patients in
asylums situated near streams and rivers are frequently to be found sitting on the banks staring
intently at the water as it flows by. There is no doubt that there exists in the human soul a profound
relationship with this natural manifestation that exerts its sway over the subconscious mind. Even
among the normal and sane, the attraction of running water is a commonly observed fact. It is
interesting to note, also, the use of the device in insane asylums known as the continuous bath, for the
subduing of violent patients. They are placed in a kind of canvas hammock and suspended over a tub.
Water at body temperature is allowed to play continually over the body until the patient has been
lulled to quiescence by its healing effect.
The psychopathologists believe that in all of us there exists a strong desire to let ourselves go, in utter
weariness, and be carried on the bosom of the stream to the eternal nothingness that is death. In the
potamophobiac, this desire has been exaggerated to an abnormal degree, and the subconscious,
reacting against its own longing for obliteration, has set up the running stream, the ever-moving sea,
and even such commonplace articles as the wash-stand faucet and the toilet-bowl, as symbols of fear.
In this complex of unbalanced imaginings may also exist the castration fear–the terror of the
unknown, predatory creatures that lurk in ocean and river.
The last stanza of Swinburne’s “Garden of Prosperine” is an apt expression of a less frenzied mood of
potamophobia:
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank, with brief thanksgiving,
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever,
That dead men rise up never,
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
IV. POTAMOPHOBIA
The Fear of Running Water
V. YLOPHOBIA
The Fear of the Forest
This is a phobia that occurs very rarely. Forests are no longer numerous, our feet travel no sylvan
paths, and instances of the morbid fear of the grove are seldom found. But there do exist persons to
whom the forest is still a shrine of terror. The great trees of the woods, which the Freudians look upon
as phallic symbols, can be strangely human creatures to the ylophobiac–creatures that reach out with
root and branch to seize and destroy him. Not noble pillars of a living glorification, but stalwart
potencies that may hang, maim, crush, rend, suck, and overwhelm him. Unutterable evils lurk within
their sprawling tentacles, dread things are poised to drop from their branches. They exude vapors that
drive him mad. They blot out the blessed security of the open heavens.
It is not always the forest that the ylophobiac fears. It may be a lone tree that stirs his terror, a tree on
his own property, as commonplace as the very walls of his house. But he cannot endure its insidious
suggestion and sooner or later will have it destroyed, however beautiful it may be. In the autumn, the
familiar maple on the lawn, stripped of its concealing leaves, takes on strange shapes in the moonlight
and whispers to the troubled soul of surcease from its agonies at the end of a dangling rope.
V. YLOPHOBIA
The Fear of the Forest
VI. NECROPHOBIA
The Fear of the Dead
Among primitive peoples, the surrounding air is thought to be inhabited by the souls of the departed.
Especially in the cases of those who have died of disease or of violence is placation necessary to
safeguard the living and protect them against the vengeance of the tomb. The advance in knowledge
did little to modify this primitive fear of death and new bogies developed to replace outworn
superstitions and discarded beliefs. The Middle Ages were obsessed with worms and grinning skulls,
with were-wolves and ghouls, vampires (the living dead who can be slain only by a nail driven through
the heart), ghosts, witches, and all the other paraphernalia of medieval magic. We have not yet
outgrown all these beliefs. Many superstitions linger on, although we may have forgotten the
significance of the homage we unconsciously pay them. Thus we place tombstones over the graves of
our dead–to prevent their return to haunt us; and should they escape, the funeral wreath is there to trip
their steps. There is a fascination and horror connected with death that few, if any, of us ever escape.
Corpses exert a powerful attraction over hundreds who have no direct connection with the dead. They
come to “view the remains”. The morgue is constantly visited by people who have no legitimate
business there. In a few, this universal morbidity is exaggerated to the point where perversity
supervenes. An unholy love is mixed with the necro-phobiac’s fear of the dead–a wild desire, but one
step removed from madness, to possess the unspeakable corruption that inspires his abject terror, and
so to lose himself in the horror and stillness of death.
VI. NECROPHOBIA
The Fear of the Dead