phobic anxiety disorder requires outspoken anxiety, evoked only in well defined situations that are not generally considered dangerous: the patient tries to avoid these situations, or endures them with dread. Obsessive compulsive disorder requires distressing and recurrent obsessional thoughts/acts recognized by the patient as his/her own; compulsive stereotyped behaviours are repeated again and again, intended to prevent some objective unlikely event and recognized by the patient as pointless and ineffective