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eisoptrophobia By: Chie Theresa Fujioka on 10/21/2001; 5:54 PM There i stand and gaze ahead I stare into the mirror But the face once known is gone Though it be in a mirror I used to watch, with animation at the Face inside the mirror but near it came to slay my soul the face inside the mirror I could not draw my eyes away from the ice jail of my mirror and so my life, it took from me to worlds inside the mirror And though I pleaded day and night for release from the mirror no one would believe my words said they, t'was my face in the mirror So there I stared, weaker, weaker pulling from the mirror but alas the demons held my eyes to devil of the mirror Strain and fight did my heart not to drown in silver river but finally my heart gave way I fell
RE: eisoptrophobia By: Evan on 4/9/2001; 6:04 PM The person in this story has a bit of a paradoxical nature doesn't he/she/it? He is fears it and yet is drawn to it as if by some otherworldly force. I personally think that there is a world on the other side of the mirror, perhaps not directly behind the mirror but with an infinite number of parallel universe there must be an infinite number of universes where the person is doing the same things as the person in the mirror. I don't entirely understand the person's fear of his counterpart however. Of course I'm not exactly in the position to do so anyway since I have the opposite condition eisoptrophilia. I like making faces in the mirror and attempting to get my counterpart to do something different from me. It never seems to happen though. Now did the guy have a heart attack or a stroke or something at the end of the story? I wasn't quite sure about the fall but that is what seemed to make the most sense.
RE: eisoptrophobia By: r.c.fancher on 5/30/2006; 2:26 PM At 1st I thought the character was getting older & felt threatened by the aging appearance of the image seen. It soon became apparent the negativity was from the viewing experience itself, as seems to be the case w/ eisoptrophobia. Compared to the previous poster, I'm a little of both-phobic & philic. I'm not sure why I got wired to be creeped out by autoscopy so early in my childhood, but media hype & the like has a lot of powerful associations w/ self viewing, & only one is pleasent! Namely finding yourself. Otherwise there's dead people looking at their own cadavers, Larry Norman's Last Supper, where the Final Judgement is likened to a hall full of mirrors where he saw his life in stages, & people who don't like to be photographed because they think they lose part of their soul each time it happens. A lot of movie stars make the latter easy to believe! Also, if you saw someone who was a dead ringer for you, something that would not otherwise exist would be the concern that person might commit an offence in your name, or be paranoid of you because you might do the same to him or her. Th most whimsical is in Back To The Future II where Doc keeps warning Marty not to run into his other self, as the paradox could destroy the universe. There's also the look on the night guard's face in T2 Judgement Day when he saw the Terminator who morphed into the guards image. When I get creeped out, one of the warnings that pop into my mind are "Keep a tight rein on your thoughts/imagination" I felt a bit like a sound system when the mike is too close to the speaker-In put/out put clash potential, aka a feedback loop. The concern, valid or not, was that viewing myself under those circumstances was creepy to begin with. It seemed like seeing myself thinking creepy thoughts would be even creepier, which would make me think even creepier thoughts, virtually the same swell of discomfort w/ sight as can be experienced w/ sound in the case of the mike & the speaker. Fortunately the feared rush of panic never occured, probably because mirrors only reflect natural light, so only my visual image was in the loop, not my thoughts. But the idea of seeing otherme & knowing he was reacting in his seeing "me" was enough to cause a low grade cycle of discomfort, but not the escalation I was concerned about. That's because a reflected image is NOT a psychic phenomenon. In proprtion to its simplicity however, it's almost certainly more predisposed to a supernatural or psychic interpretation than probably anything else in existance. Photography requires a camera, a reflective image only requires the right surface. Because only the visual is in the loop, no supernatural comlications are involved. The "paralel universe" suggestion could- in theory-raise another negative connotation that science itself can enhance. Namely that paralel universes are matter & antimatter respectively. This could install a subconcious fear of mutual annihilation, which even if not conciously believed, the idea could cause discomfort. I only experience eisoptrophobia in very special circumstances,as in when I'm alone & seeing a secondary refletion-an unfamilier profile of myself.Even that's no problem when there is anybody in the area. When I said I'm a little of both, I mean I'm also very fascinated by autoscopy. In a local science center, there at least was an exhibit called a keilidoscope. This was a wrap around mirror walk- in, that apparently freaked a lot of people out, some into crawling out under the door. I was not one of them. I could pretty much swagger in there & say, "Well, I suppose you're wondering why I called this meeting, & I'm wondering why you're all saying the same thing!" lol
RE: eisoptrophobia By: r.c.fancher on 8/4/2006; 2:08 AM On the subject rather than the poem. This phobia seems to blur the definition of phobias. Even though your reflected image can't hurt you, that doesn't necessarily mean there aren,t genuine sensation surges that could result from what amounts to observing an observer. B/n input & output, there's definately one of the 2 in the cycle. Presumably input-the visual input of the observed to the observer. What I'm not sure of is whether or not there's any OUTput that contributes to the cycle. There is a tendency in the subconscious to assume there is, & that alone can be enough to generate a "Phantum" signal. An impression that something's trying to escalate. One of the reasons I think the definition of phobia is blurred is because there are things that are disproportionately unpleasent to us compared to the harm they can cause. Like-for instance-some of the worms & bugs people eat on fear factor. Apparantly, as gross as these things may seem, it had been determined that they would not kill you. Indeed, they're probably less harmful to eat than some of the processed junk-foods we eat. Even though birds eat them all the time, even they seem to prefer processed food if they had their druthers. I saw a crow give up a night-crawler when I offered him a cheeze puff. Like he was saying "Forget this. I'm going for perfectly good junk food. Therefor, it appears the preference for processed & against raw natural food seems to be universal.The dislike we all have of eating nightcrawlers & worms & bugs could be called a universal phobia if there is a such thing. Usually phobias are considered personal & unique. Most of us have either heard or heard of people saying they can tell they're being stared at. Chills going up & down the spine, hair standing on end. If the disposition of the one doing the staring(What's on his mind) can effect such feelings, that could in part explain eisoptrophobic reactions, especially if you're looking at yourself from the side using a secondary reflextion w/ 2 or more mirrors. As you look at the side profile of your image, you get a creepy feeling like you're being stared at from the side, the creepy feelings of the one staring at you(namely you) aggravate your heebie geebies. You see what you look like when you're creeped out. If you restrain yourself from screaming like you've seen a ghost, you see what you look like when you're in denial. I think it was Heizenburg who said everything you observe changes. That you can't observe something without effecting it. If indeed there is no such thing as passive observation, then maybe you ARE having an active effect on yourself, then there could easily be a formula for a feedback loop. So maybe Eisoptrophobia is not a true phobia by the strictest emotional definition, but an involuntary physiological cycling of signals that bypasses your emotions & voluntary responsiveness. Even an extremely weak original signal can escalate into a big-time headload. BY analogy, I'm not acrophobic(Afraid of heights) I've been up the 76 storey Columbia Center, & the Space Needle, walked across the Narrows Bridge, flown, & skydived, but only in the last did I experience any fear. That was more based on fear from having been injured landing than from looking down from the plane, though there was a bit of that too. But for the most part, the fear of heights didn't enslave me into anything. But I digress. One time, when I was crossing a railroad tressel, about 20 to 30' above the cidar river, suddenly, my eyes couldn't focus & I got dizzy. B/N the ties of the tressel & the river below, my eyes couldn't make up their mind & ignored my brains orders to focus on the ties. There was no conscious fear-just an involuntary reaction I never had before or since & it was 30 years ago. Could be a similar thing going on in an Eisoptrophobic experience. The experience may not be a phobia in itself, but a phobia may result from it.
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