Chapter 1: Origins of Obsessions

In this chapter, Davis explains in detail the origins of obsessions, and how obsession was defined many years ago. Several steps had to come before the idea of obsessions in order for the emergence of obsession to be established.   Some of these steps included the idea of obsession being a demonic possession, the idea that obsession had to deal with nerves, the idea of partial insanity, and many more steps finally leading up to obsession.

 Davis gives facts relating all the way back to the Renaissance time when people considered obsession as demonic possession.  Davis explains the idea of the demonic possession model and how people believed that the devil was the cause of a person’s obsession.  In this idea, the only way to relieve a person from their obsession is through exorcism.  After the idea of demonic possession, the next explanation of obsessions and mental illness was the nervous system.  I was amazed that people actually believed that the cause of mental illness was nerves, and that the only solution was the applications of electric shocks!

Partial insanity, during the eighteenth century, was also a topic Davis spoke about, and I could actually see the relation it had towards obsession.  As Davis explains, partial insanity meant being “strongly affected by a mental problem but also clearly aware of the symptoms…the person might be said to articulate the conditions but powerless to resist.”  I see where this relates to obsession because when a person has an obsession, they know that they have a problem, but they cannot control or stop their thoughts.   Some diseases that people believed had the quality of partial insanity were hysteria, hypochondria, vapors, and spleen.  Davis refers to these conditions as “the quartet”.  Another topic I thought to be crazy was the idea of the “organ theory”, and how people actually believed that vapors from specific organs of the body affected other organs like the brain.

Even though we may look at these concepts as completely weird and useless, these concepts and others had to happen in order for the true meaning of obsession to come about and to understand it better.

OCD: Now and Forever

In this chapter, “OCD: Now and Forever”, Davis explains how OCD changed from being one of the most rare diseases before the 1970’s, and how now it is one of the most common disorders today.  This change wasn’t a small one.  Davis points out how before only one in twenty thousand people had OCD and how it increased to three out of a hundred, and yet again increased to one in ten all in the range of just thirty years!  One of the reasons that Davis says why this disorder seemed to increase so much is because of the media exposure.  According to the media exposure theory, more people have come forward and seemed to have confessed of having some of the same symptoms or feelings that they have heard on the radio or seen on TV, about 16 percent in fact.  Also, when it comes to Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Scale), many people say that this isn’t very valid for various reasons like having a “leading the witness” effect, which probably lead more people to think they have OCD when they really don’t.  Another topic Davis touches upon is how now many books and psychologists are referring to OCD as a “hidden epidemic”.  He even points out the Osborn book, “Tormenting Thoughts and Secret Rituals: The Hidden Epidemic of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder”, that we read.  Overall, OCD is a very difficult and complex disorder, and it is very difficult to determine why a person has it. 

"Rat Man"

This so far is one of the most odd and confusing cases I have yet to read about OCD!  This reading involves a case that Freud himself analyzed, and it consists of all the notes Freud wrote down about each session that he had with the “Rat Man”.   The reason for his weird name is that he was told a terrifying story of a punishment including rats digging their way into a criminal’s anus from a pot held on their buttocks, and he was tormented by this fear.  Dr. Lorenz, the “Rat Man”, had a very odd case of OCD, and had suffered from obsessions since his childhood.  From my understanding, some of his obsessions included the fear that his father might die, even though he was already dead, and that something bad would happen to the woman he admired, or that he would harm her himself.  As I read farther into the reading, Freud takes note of the many bizarre dreams the Rat Man had, many of them being sexual.  Another subject that was frequently brought up was the Rat man’s masturbation.  I had trouble relating this to everything else, but I think it was maybe a compulsion that he did in response to some of his obsessions.  What was so confusing to me was the fact that there were so many different dreams and fantasies the Rat Man had and it wasn’t in any particular order, rather he jumped around from topic to topic throughout each session.  What I find interesting is the fact that Freud was able to take everything the Rat Man said and analyze it in some way.  Based on reading Freud’s notes on this case, I know I could never make any sense to the Rat man’s odd obsessions.

Diagnosing OCD

According to the chapter Diagnosing OCD, a person diagnosed with this disorder suffers from severe obsessions and compulsions.  Both of these parts have specific characteristics that determine whether or not a person is diagnosed with this disorder or if they are just having ordinary worries or addictions.

As stated in the DSM-IV, obsessions are "recurrent and persistent thoughts that are experienced as intrusive and inappropriate and that cause marked anxiety or distress".  Four main qualities that are described in this definition describe the term obsession: intrusive, recurrent, inappropriate, and unwanted.  A thought that is intrusive is a thought that unexpectedly pops into the mind at any moment without any warnings and was never triggered by someone or something in the first place.  Because it is "intrusive", it "intrudes" the mind at any given time.  Recurrent describes a thought that never seems to go away and stay away.  A recurrent thought will always come back no matter how hard you try to rid your mind from it.  This characteristic can confuse an obsession with a phobia since they are both recurrent.  Whereas a phobia is a fear of a certain situation or item like riding on a plane or mice, an obsession is mainly centered on a thought.  Another quality of obsession is that it is unwanted.  An obsession is not in any way wanted, not even the slightest bit.  A person that has an obsession tries with everything they have to get rid of it.  Unfortunately, the more a person tries to free themselves from an obsession, the more powerful it comes back.  This quality is similar with an addiction.  The difference between an addiction and an obsession is that a person with an addiction receives some type of pleasure whether it is with a drug, gambling, or anything else.  There is no pleasure that comes from an obsession.  Finally, the last characteristic of obsession is inappropriateness.  This basically means that there is really no solid reason for a person to have a particular obsession, they just do.  These four characteristics are what make up a severe obsession.  When a person is so desperate to relieve themselves from an obsession, compulsions start coming into play.

There are two different types of compulsions, behavioral and mental.  According to Osborn, "a compulsion is a repetitive act that is clearly excessive and is performed in order to lessen the discomfort of  an obsession".  Some examples of behavioral compulsions are washing checking, checking, and hoarding.  Some people have to wash their hands over and over again throughout the day because they have an obsession with thinking that their hands are always dirty.  Others cannot fall asleep or leave the house without constantly checking to see if the light switch or the stove is completely off.  People will even live in complete cludder and hardly be able to move around in their own home because they save practically everything thinking that it would be useful one day.  Mental compulsions try to releive a person from an obsession through ideas and certain rituals like repeating a prayer constantly or having a counter-image.  A counter-image is an idea in which a person tries to imagine a scenerio to get  rid of their obsession.  Osborn describes her experience of imagining her skin being covered by a protective cream beause her obsession was the thought  of needles being stabbed into her skin.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is something not to be played around with.  Some situations can really harm a person not only mentally but physically.  For example, people who wash their hands constantly can really damage their hands.  Their are several questionnares that Osborn mentions to help determine whether a person has OCD like the Padua Inventory, the Maudlsey Obsessive-Compulsive Inventory, and the Leyton Obsessional Inventory .

Napoleon's Worries

The letter Napoleon wrote to his wife while he was away at war clearly showed that he was very upset because his wife addressed him as "Vous" instead of "Tu", had failed to only write him two letters in a matter of four days, and wrote very brief and short letters at that. Napoleon may have exaggerated a bit but in my opinion he was not obsessing over the fact that his wife's behavior seemed a little suspicious.  Relationships today have small arguments over the simplest reasons such as not hearing from each other in several hours or being called by your name instead of "honey" or "babe".  Considering the fact that Napoleon is at war far away and he probably misses his family very much, the fact that he got upset is understandable.  He feels that because of the lack of communication and formal language that maybe his wife is being unfaithful, and all he wants is reassurance that nothing is going on behind his back which is completely normal.