Oikophobia

Oikophobia, in its modern political sense, describes a tendency to criticize or reject one's own home, home society, or country while praising others by comparison. The philosopher Roger Scruton first wrote of oikophobia in this sense while at Boston University in 1993 and developed it further in his 2004 book England and the Need for Nations, using it to describe an attitude he associated with certain political ideologies that favor outsiders over one's own culture. The word had appeared earlier in a different sense: the poet Robert Southey used it in his 1808 Letters from England to mean something closer to wanderlust, a restless urge to be away from home, unrelated to Scruton's later political usage. Despite its phobia suffix, oikophobia is not a recognized psychiatric diagnosis: it is not used in clinical psychiatry and does not appear in the DSM-5. Some writers have suggested it may describe a stage many people pass through in adolescence, a passing rejection of home and family rather than any lasting disorder.