Spirit of the Dead Watching her fear. Mathews says it is too simple to attribute Tehura's terror to her belief in spirits and irrational fear of the dark; she says, following Sweetman, that Gauguin's sexual predilections should not be ignored when trying to understand the work. Rather, she suggests the girl's fear was a response to Gauguin's aggressive behavior, consistent with his known battering (so says Mathews) of his wife Mette, the submissive fear in her eyes his erotic reward. Stephen F. Eisenman, professor of Art History at Northwestern University, suggests the painting and its narrative is "a veritable encyclopaedia of colonial racism and misogyny".
Fear of the dark same article states that "the phobia has been known to be extremely disruptive to adult patients and… incapacitating". The word "nyctophobia" comes from the Greek νυκτός, "nyktos", genitive of νύξ, "nyx", "night" and φόβος, "phobos", "fear". The fear of darkness or night has several non-clinical terminologies—"lygophobia", "scotophobia" and "achluophobia". Fear of the dark Fear of the dark is a common fear or phobia among children and, to a varying degree, adults. A fear of the dark does not always concern darkness itself; it can also be a fear of possible or imagined dangers concealed by darkness. Some degree of fear