Arachnophobia can be extreme and, in such cases, is debilitating to a person and profoundly affects their ability to enjoy life. There are psychiatrists who treat phobias and can cure acute arachnophobia pretty easily. I saw it TV once. A woman was so deathly afraid of spiders that she rarely left her house and had to sit with her legs drawn up for fear a spider might crawl onto her foot. A psychiatrist showed her a tarantula in a jar and she freaked out. He told her that within half an hour she would be holding it in her hand with no fear at all. Of course she said no way.

About 20 minutes later, she opened the jar herself and dumped the tarantula onto her hand and let it crawl up her arm. The host asked her how she felt and she smiled and said she felt fine. I saw a guy who had a terrible fear of spiders undergo hypnosis and do the same thing, he opened a jar with a tarantula and dumped onto his hand and then smiled and said, "This is really cool!" "Are you afraid?" asked the hypnotist. "No," he said, "This spider is really cool!"

They say it's an easily treatable phobia.