![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The desire is too intense to be abandoned, so it must be repressed. The moral code of the obsessive-compulsive is written in an idiom which isolates him from the rest of mankind, but worse still, it’s an idiom which he himself can’t comprehend: he lives under a private law more exacting than any written code, at once impossibly rigid in its demands and subject to sudden and incomprehensible changes.įreud argues that such compulsion has its root in the infantile desire to touch, to touch oneself, and the parental ban on this practice. And to the question “why must you do these things?”, he can give no answer at all: the rationalizations with which the high-functioning neurotic justifies his various habits collapse under the obvious absurdity of what the really ill must do. Prohibitions and compulsions are not always clearly distinguished (the obligation to pluck every piece of lint off every piece of clothing before you leave the house can easily become a prohibition on leaving the house), and in their extension and elaboration they risk enveloping the patient’s life perfectly: he may do nothing but that which he is compelled to do. The clinical picture is at once simple and engrossing: the sufferer’s life is bounded in every direction by prohibitions (I can’t go in there, I can’t eat that, I can’t see him or call her.) and by compulsions (check the locks 17 times, wash your hands until they’re raw and bleeding, fold it perfectly and if you miss the crease start over again). Consider the sad case of the obsessive-compulsive. ![]()
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