What is it about?
This paper describes the development of a questionnaire to measure morphing fears. Morphing fears are worries that a person may gain undesirable characteristics from another person. Morphing fears are thought to be a type of contamination fear.
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Why is it important?
Contamination fears have become the focus of intensive research effort since they form the commonest type of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Morphing fearas are thought to be a subtype of contamination fears along with mental contamination obsessions. Although there is a good literature on treating OCD using Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), a significant proportion of people fail to improve. People with morphing fears may not even be identified as having OCD because their thoughts are considered so abnormal as to warrant a diagnosis of psychosis. This paper offers a well developed measure of morphing fears which could be used to track specific improvements, and may help to develop novel approaches such as those developed for other types of contamination fears.
Perspectives
Morphing fears are an important part of our understanding of obsessive compulsive disorder. Some authors see them as being akin to contamination fears, but to me they might also represent the persistence of childhood magical thinking but in a pathological form.
Dr Timothy Ivor Williams
University of Reading
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Development and Validation of the Morphing Fear Questionnaire (MFQ), Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, November 2015, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/cpp.1987.
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