A social phobia common in Japan but almost nonexistent in the West is taijin kyofusho, an incapacitating fear of offending or harming others through one’s own awkward social behavior or imagined physical defect (Kirmayer, 1991). The focus of cognition for a sufferer of this phobia is on the harm to others, not on embarrassment to the self as in social phobias in the West.