Fear of falling
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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The fear of falling (FOF) is a natural fear and is typical of most humans and mammals, in varying degrees of extremity. It differs from acrophobia (the fear of heights), although the two fears are closely related and sometimes indistinguishable. The fear of falling encompasses the anxieties accompanying the sensation and the possibly dangerous effects of falling, opposed to the heights themselves. Individuals suffering from barophobia may fear falling solely because of the gravity pull associated with it. Those who have little fear of falling may be said to have a head for heights.
Falling in dreams
According to Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation of Dreams, falling dreams fall under the category of “typical dreams,” meaning the “dreams which almost everyone has dreamt alike and which we are accustomed to assume must have the same meaning for everyone." In the fairly recent study, The Typical Dreams of Canadian University Students, common dreams were investigated by administering a Typical Dreams Questionnaire (TDQ). The results confirmed that typical dreams are consistent over time, region, and gender, and a few themes can be considered almost universal: falling (73.8% prevalence), flying or soaring in the air (48.3%), and swimming (34.3%). In 1967, Saul and Curtis published a paper entitled, 'Dream Form and Strength of Impulse in Dreams of Falling and Other Dreams of Descent.’ According to Saul and Curtis, dreams of falling can have various meanings, such as the sensation of falling asleep, the symbolization of a real risk of falling from bed, the repetition of traumatic experiences of falling or sensations of falling from parents’ arms in childhood, birth/delivery, ambition or the renouncement of responsibility, or life experiences such as flying in an airplane. They quote another author, Gutheil (1951), who suggests a range of possible meanings subsumed under the general idea of loss of (mental) equilibrium. These include loss of temper, loss of self-control, yielding, decline of the accepted moral standard or loss of consciousness. Studies performed in recent years on the dream patterns of a group of 685 students attending secondary schools in Milan have concluded that, in dreams, fear is more frequently associated with falling, while happiness is connected with flying, and surprise with suspension and vertical content.
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