What is social phobia? How can it be described? Before attempting that, it is perhaps well to remember that the “criteria” found in diagnostic manuals are not depictions of social phobia. Rather, these list its indicators; features considered as particularly prominent, allowing spotting social phobia – typically from someone's self-representation. As is the case with DSM and ICD, in principle there could be several sets of indicators, potentially all useful (not necessarily to the same degree) in identifying social phobia.

What conditions ought a description of social phobia satisfy? First, as an abnormal condition, social phobia has to be a significant behavioral or psychological pattern associated with considerable distress and impaired functioning, compromising the ability of such individuals to pursue desired goals and to participate fully in the life of their community.

Second, as a phobic pattern it concerns a state of anxious distress in the face of a looming threat. The state of fright may be widened to include attempts of the individual to come to grips with it; this straddles both the somatic and the interpersonal elements.

Third, it ought to give prominence to the social or interpersonal environment within which the social phobic pattern is embedded. This is indispensable because the fearful distress is evoked quite precisely by specific activities as actually performed or only when imagined in the presence of others or by interpersonal transactions in which the goals pursued, namely getting one's way and gaining approval from others, are experienced as dangerously unattainable or likely to fail.