Indiana Jones: The Irrational Fear Of Snakes

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This case study will look at the irrational fear of snakes as portrayed by the character Indiana Jones. Over the course of four movies, Indiana Jones has confronted his fear many times. He has even stated on many occasion that he hates snakes. At other times he has lamented why he is always confronted with snakes. This fear is clearly irrational, as most of the time, the snakes he is confronted with are neither poisonous nor overly dangerous.
On closer inspection of Indiana Jones phobia, it could be argued, that he merely dislikes or hates snakes. The situations Dr. Jones seems to find himself in are also often dangerous. One could argue that this would make his actions not irrational, but just a normal response to dangerous situation. I would certainly give Dr. Jones a pass on the time he was face to face with a cobra. However, he is clearly frightened of just being in the presence of snakes regardless of the danger presented. He even climbs out of a seat in an open cockpit plane due to the presence of a pet snake. This would clearly be avoidance that is out of …show more content…

Jones I would suggest starting with a graded exposure therapy to treat his phobia (). I do not think that a flood technique would be helpful in this situation as Dr. Jones was dropped into a pit with hundreds of snakes in the first movie. Seeing as Dr. Jones still suffers from his phobia in later movies, one would infer that his unintentional flood exposure was not successful in treating his phobia. I would suggest gradually increasing Dr. Jones exposure to snakes, starting with visualizing them. After this, he could then be shown pictures of snakes leading to actually introducing them into the same room as Dr. Jones. I hope this would progress until he was able to touch a snake. Should any of the above steps be to distressing then a benzodiazepine could be used before the exposure therapy. This should help relieve the distress caused by exposure to this

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