Obsessive compulsion disorder is one that consumes the minds and actions of those who experience it. Those excessive thoughts, also known as obsessions, lead to repetitive, often unwanted behaviors, known as compulsions. The person is driven to perform these acts as a means of reducing or stopping the negative consequences of these thoughts. When the disorder takes control of the mind, the person generally becomes centered on fear of germs or the specific arrangement of objects. This may lead to anxiety, apprehension and panic attacks, as well as, nightmares or depression that result from the person trying to overcome the disorder but is not capable of doing so. Moreover, guilt or food aversion is commonly associated with the disorder. OCD …show more content…
From a psychodynamic point of view, these thoughts are generated from the id, which is the subconscious that constantly defiles morality, and those compulsions are defense mechanisms against those obsessions. Freud argued that “unsuccessful repression of childhood psychosexual memories, led to painful, [unbearable] ideas [that were later] linked with ‘other ideas’ [that are not as] unbearable, thus producing by this false relationship, obsessions” (Wu, 2004). These obsessions are then followed by compulsions, creating …show more content…
However, although both OCD and OCPD share some common ideas and symptoms of perfectionism, this idea has been challenged several times in the past couple of decades. In a famous case study, Rasmussen and Tsuang, two researchers that examined OCD, studied this relationship on forty-four patients. They came to a