Meanings
- Of or relating to scopophobia.
Why have scopophobic and gaze theories been so popular and totalizing in critical theory?
1995, John Thornton Caldwell, “Postscript: Intellectual Culture, Image, and Iconoclasm”, in Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television, New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, →ISBN, page 3434 more examples
Preoccupation with the shameful change in her body is emphasized in the numerous scopophilic and scopophobic references in these pictures.
1955 November–December, Bernard C. Meyer, Fred Brown, Abraham Levine, “Observations on the House-Tree-Person Drawing Test Before and After Surgery”, in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, volume XVII, number 6, Philadelphia, Pa.: The American Psychosomatic Society, Inc., page 436, column 1Scopophilic–exhibitionistic distortions, scopophobic elements, and inhibitions in the countertransference can impair the analyst’s skill and contribute to those interminable analyses that “move” without movement.
1974, David W. Allen, “Introduction”, in The Fear of Looking or Scopophilic–Exhibitionistic Conflicts, Charlottesville, Va.: University Press of Virginia, →ISBN, page 6The complicated scopophilic-scopophobic dialectic of exhibitionism and paranoia that is evident in such figures as Rousseau shows the intimate linkages between vision and psychological phenomena.
1986, Martin Jay, “In the Empire of the Gaze: Foucault and the Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-century French Thought”, in David Couzens Hoy, editor, Foucault: A Critical Reader, Oxford, Oxon; Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, published 1996, →ISBN, page 177[…] a Wednesday night on which the alight cat ran (as alight cats will, like hell) but ran after Lenz, seemingly, leaping the same fences Lenz hurdled and staying on his tail and not only making an unacceptable attention-calling racket but also illuminating Lenz to the scopophobic view of passing homes until it finally decided to drop to the ground […]
1996, David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest […], Boston, Mass.; New York, N.Y.: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN, page 544
Origin
- Ancient Greekσκοπέω“examine, inspect, look to or into, consider”
- Englishscopophobic
From Ancient Greek σκοπέω (skopéō, “examine, inspect, look to or into, consider”) + -phobic.
More words from Ancient Greek
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
scopophobic. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scopophobic
“scopophobic.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scopophobic. Accessed November 4, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “scopophobic,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/scopophobic.
Source: scopophobic on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.