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Novels where the main character has a social phobia/anxiety

wiggle

wiggle

New Member
I'm looking for fiction books where the protagonist has a social phobia or social anxiety. Does anyone know any books relating to this topic? I think it'd be a good read.

Thanks.
 
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Although Boo Radley isn't the main character, he is a pretty big one.

I haven't read Marcel Proust's volumes In Search of Lost Time, but I heard he wrote them whilst staying in his bed for a number of years, so maybe his protagonist has a similar disorder... Peder will know.

There's a psychology-type book, called The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks, and that contains one or two stories of characters you're looking for.
 
Wiggle,
Dostoevsky's Notes From Underground begins with these sentences:
I am a sick man....I am a spiteful man....An unattractive man.
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and I would say they understate it by quite a bit.

Regarding Proust's Remembrance..... I would say he is at worst love-sick for a (memorable) part of it.

The first one is extremely short, the second one extremely long.
Peder
 
Steve Martin's The Pleasure of My Company pretty much fits the bill. It's not brilliant but it's not a bad read either.
 
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - the narrator is a teenager with a condition similar to autism.
 
MonkeyCatcher said:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - the narrator is a teenager with a condition similar to autism.
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All of Anne Lamott's books were written by and/or about a person or persons with every imaginable anxiety and/or phobia, social or/and otherwise.

lamott.jpg



.link

Early on, Lamott's hard-luck novels were impressive chronicles of family strife punctuated by bad (but often entertaining) behavior. Everyone in Lamott's books is sort of screwed up, but she stocks them with a humor and core decency that make them hard to resist. In Hard Laughter, she tells the (semi-autobiographical) story of a dysfunctional family rocked by the father's brain tumor diagnosis. In Rosie and its 1997 sequel, Crooked Little Heart, the heroines are a sassy teenage girl and her alcoholic, widowed mom. Another precocious child provides the point of view in All New People, in which a girl rides out the waves of the 1960s with her nutty parents.
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MonkeyCatcher said:
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - the narrator is a teenager with a condition similar to autism.
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I've read the book. It doesn't make the kid a sociophobe (sp?).
 
wiggle said:
I've read the book. It doesn't make the kid a sociophobe (sp?).
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But he was. He freaked out whenever he had interactions with strangers, and withdrew into himself when encountered with a highly social environement, such as the train station where he went into his own world for hours.
 
I have an autistic cousin. It's not a phobia about social situations it's more a general aversion to external stimulation and new situations. I think with a phobia there is more thinking, fretting and worrying even when contemplating the situations for which the phobias exist. For an autistic child there is only reaction to the situation.
 
drmjwdvm said:
I have an autistic cousin. It's not a phobia about social situations it's more a general aversion to external stimulation and new situations. I think with a phobia there is more thinking, fretting and worrying even when contemplating the situations for which the phobias exist. For an autistic child there is only reaction to the situation.
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From Wikipedia:
A phobia (from the Greek φόβος "fear"), is a strong, persistent fear of situations, objects, activities, or persons.

Social phobias – fears involving other people or social situations

From those definitions, it seems to me that the child did indeed have a social phobia, as he had a strong, persistent fear of other people and highly social situations. I would argue that he did spend time worrying about meeting new people - but anyway, if worrying is what makes a phobia, then I'm scared of almost everything!
 
I agree with Monkey Catcher. For all a person with an autistic disorder has a different rationale for being scared of people, the outside world, life, whatever it is... it's still a fear with exactly the same characteristics as someone without the autistic disorder has.
 
I wonder if Humbert from Lolita would qualify?
In and out of mental institutions....murderer, pedophile....etc....
:eek:
 
steffee said:
I agree with Monkey Catcher. For all a person with an autistic disorder has a different rationale for being scared of people, the outside world, life, whatever it is... it's still a fear with exactly the same characteristics as someone without the autistic disorder has.
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I hear ya' guys there is definitely anxiety but I have to take exception to the words rational and persistent. If you ask my cousin if he has a fear of people of social situations he won't really understand what your saying. In essence he dosen't know that he has a fear. In other words before he is in a social situation he doesn't fear getting into one, or try to avoid them. His mind just dosen't work that way. It's really the noise, the colors, and the touching more than say a fear of feeling abnormal, unaccepted, making a faux pas, or sticking out. And again he dosen't know he's afraid until it actually happens to him.

His doctor explained it to me once, "The stimulation sets off a kind of static electricity storm is his brain that he finds unbearably unpleasant." It can happen from something as simple as rearranging the furniture or a loud airplane flying overhead.

By the way I really enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime. I bought copies for many of my family members last year.
 
wiggle said:
I'm looking for fiction books where the protagonist has a social phobia or social anxiety. Does anyone know any books relating to this topic? I think it'd be a good read.

Thanks.
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Creepers, by David Morrell. It's up for a Bram Stoker Award this year.
 
sirmyk said:
Creepers, by David Morrell. It's up for a Bram Stoker Award this year.
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Sirmyk checked this out on Amazon today and had to order. Thanks for the GREAT recommendation!
 
drmjwdvm said:
...checked this out on Amazon today and had to order. Thanks for the GREAT recommendation!
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If you like Creepers, he has a follow-up novel called Scavenger coming out soon. While Creepers tackles claustrophobia, Scavenger tackles the opposite: agoraphobia.

It's nice to know that the author of classics such as First Blood (Rambo) and Brotherhood of the Rose, can still write first-rate fiction today like Creepers.
 
drmjwdvm said:
I hear ya' guys there is definitely anxiety but I have to take exception to the words rational and persistent. If you ask my cousin if he has a fear of people of social situations he won't really understand what your saying. In essence he dosen't know that he has a fear. In other words before he is in a social situation he doesn't fear getting into one, or try to avoid them. His mind just dosen't work that way. It's really the noise, the colors, and the touching more than say a fear of feeling abnormal, unaccepted, making a faux pas, or sticking out. And again he dosen't know he's afraid until it actually happens to him.
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Your cousin is obviously different from the boy in the book then, because if I recall correctly he mentions a few times that he does not like meeting strangers and that crowds of people freak him out, both of which indicate the knowledge of his phobia. Secondly, I seem to remember that autism affects each person differently and to different degrees. Perhaps the social side of it does not affect your cousin as much as it did the child in the book. And thirdly, the child did not have autism, but a condition similar to it. Perhaps one of the differences is the awareness of this social phobia.
 
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