Acrophobia is the fear of heights and many have suggested that it shouldn't even be a phobia since it's normal and self-preserving. In my understanding, the object of a phobia can cause fear in any shape or form. Now, I haven't gone through too many testimonials but so far I don't know of anybody who has experienced symptoms of acrophobia by reading about a cliff, or from looking at a picture taken from a high point. I wonder if people affected by acrophobia would dream of flying? And if they do,

would they classify this as a nightmare or a pleasant dream?

Personally I don't think it's a phobia but I guess if something needs to be taken seriously by science it must have a greek name. And as we all know these kinds of issues have come to the surface relatively recently and many people have avoided confronting their phobias because they don't want to be seen as abnormal.

Obviously there is a large degree of psychology at play here and one can't make a general description/assessment of it and make it stick to everyone who feels uncomfortable at reasonable heights, but as far as a main cause and cure I would side with the scientists and not with the psychologists. I include below László Kozma's description of some symptoms, I recommend the read of the full article, it's a very good one:
"Just to make sure, acrophobia is when you look out from the balcony on the second floor and feel safer to stay close to the wall or hold on maniacally to anything secure or when you feel dizzy on a mountain trail and you have to crawl on all fours, grabbing every blade of grass for the illusion of safety but you are pretty sure you could fall any moment. If you look down, the world seems to spin and sway, your stomach contracts, you forget to breathe regularly, mouth dries out, you start sweating like a pig and generally panic in every possible way and swear that if you ever get down alive, you'll never set foot on a hill again. Meanwhile your friends are carelessly passing by, jumping from one rock to the other, wondering what the hell is happening to you.."

Acrophobia is not vertigo nor aerophobia, even though they can be linked or all of them be present in the acrophobe or acrophobiac.
Traditionally people had attributed acrophobia to a fear of falling engrained in the memory by an event in early childhood, while some other would go as far as to say that is a primate fear already present in mammals. Therefore some of the treatments include hypnotherapy and the more widely used behavior therapy. This last one has two methods, desensitization and flooding. The first method aims to conquer the fear by gradually exposing the acrophobe to heights while flooding uses a more extreme approach by introducing the patient to their worst fear, the thinking being that if they survive that the smaller fears can't be that bad.

Welcome to the present... There has been much research into acrophobia in recent years, and if you have already clicked on the wiki link Acrophobia, you may have seen a more founded and complex definition.
Some of you may have noticed how in later years science refers to balance, or equilibrioception as the "sixth sense", in short this system is composed of visual aids plus proprioceptive and vestibular cues. The vestibular system uses the semicircular canals within the ear to indicate rotational movements, and the otoliths to indicate linear accelerations. Together with the proprioception sensory system which provides feedback solely on the status of the body internally, whether the body is moving with required effort, as well as where the various parts of the body are located in relation to each other, these systems interact with our eyes and muscles to continually adjust our balance. And so it's concluded that the fear of heights appears as the visual information overwhelms the proprioceptive and vestibular information, and as the person fails to use that balance information they feel they could easily fall. The diagnosis can be a malfunction within the any of the equilibrioception systems or lack of proprioception awareness.

We could then say that acrophobics are not behaving irrationaly, they just have a normal reaction to the information (or lack of) being passed by the equilibrioception systems. It also explains how some psychotherapy exercises would help, as they force the person to relax and therefore process all the information and not just the visuals.

Be it one way or the other, we have had people joining our trapeze and aerial class in order to overcome their fear of heights, and although this has not worked in all cases, the majority of those scared of heights have improved since coming to the classes. Certainly, it will help you develop or get in tune with your equilibrioception senses.
In our aerial introduction classes, all learning is initially done at low heights which gives participants the chance to feel comfortable on the equipment. This means that that, as the equipment and the feeling of being off the ground becomes more familiar, people can start to relax and become more tuned in to the reaction of their bodies, and to the visual, proprioceptive and vestibular information which combine to influence our balance and perception of height. Through gradual exposure to height and becoming used to the aerial equipment, what starts out as fear can be replaced by an exciting buzz - the thrill of not only trying something new, but of conquering a fear.