Scrupulosity
September 19, 2011 7:43 AM Subscribe
Locke, Johnson, Kierkegaard, Freud, and dozens of other historical figures on the subject of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
From "A Short History of OCD."
From "A Short History of OCD."
I wonder how many "compulsive rituals" we as a society carry out due to the great wealth of some sick person.
You mean like pants?
posted by Hoopo at 8:53 AM on September 19, 2011 [2 favorites]
You mean like pants?
posted by Hoopo at 8:53 AM on September 19, 2011 [2 favorites]
That Freud link purports to be telling us about a girl's obsession with (rituals about) quietness, but in fact tell us about Freud's obsession with sex.
I wasn't quite sure what this was going to mean, so I started reading. It was going along pretty uneventfully until I got to
"Our patient gradually came to learn that it was as symbols of the female genitals that clocks were banished from her equipment for the night."
Freud seems so normal until he seems incredibly fucking weird.
posted by brennen at 8:59 AM on September 19, 2011 [3 favorites]
I wasn't quite sure what this was going to mean, so I started reading. It was going along pretty uneventfully until I got to
"Our patient gradually came to learn that it was as symbols of the female genitals that clocks were banished from her equipment for the night."
Freud seems so normal until he seems incredibly fucking weird.
posted by brennen at 8:59 AM on September 19, 2011 [3 favorites]
Our patient gradually came to learn that it was as symbols of the female genitals that clocks were banished from her equipment for the night.
Well, obviously. Freud wouldn't have it any other way.
I remember, several years back, there was an installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art...I can't seem to google for it, otherwise I'd give you a picture. Anyway, this installation was of the inside of a pyramid, an ancient Egyptian tomb, except instead of all the usual trappings of Egyptian tombs, the walls were papered in pornographic pictures and there were dildos everywhere.
I have to assume that Freud had an eye condition that made him see every room he walked into as this porn-bedazzled tomb, with overt symbols of sex hanging everywhere, because otherwise...guys...he's the crazy one.
posted by phunniemee at 9:01 AM on September 19, 2011 [3 favorites]
Well, obviously. Freud wouldn't have it any other way.
I remember, several years back, there was an installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art...I can't seem to google for it, otherwise I'd give you a picture. Anyway, this installation was of the inside of a pyramid, an ancient Egyptian tomb, except instead of all the usual trappings of Egyptian tombs, the walls were papered in pornographic pictures and there were dildos everywhere.
I have to assume that Freud had an eye condition that made him see every room he walked into as this porn-bedazzled tomb, with overt symbols of sex hanging everywhere, because otherwise...guys...he's the crazy one.
posted by phunniemee at 9:01 AM on September 19, 2011 [3 favorites]
I have to assume that Freud had an eye condition that made him see every room he walked into as this porn-bedazzled tomb, with overt symbols of sex hanging everywhere, because otherwise...guys...he's the crazy one.
Who was it who said that Freud was the most brilliant writer who has ever lived because of the way he managed to convince everyone that they shared his neuroses?
posted by daniel_charms at 9:23 AM on September 19, 2011 [5 favorites]
Who was it who said that Freud was the most brilliant writer who has ever lived because of the way he managed to convince everyone that they shared his neuroses?
posted by daniel_charms at 9:23 AM on September 19, 2011 [5 favorites]
I don't see how Locke's piece is related (except tangentially in that it is about getting started on a course of action vs. worrying about getting started).
posted by oddman at 9:50 AM on September 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by oddman at 9:50 AM on September 19, 2011 [1 favorite]
The following excerpt is from Johnson's short novel, Rasselas. Boswell noted that Johnson had referred to his own mental condition "in one of the chapters of his Rasselas."
No disease of the imagination...is so difficult of cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when melancholick notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or banish them. [My emphasis]
Johnson isn't talking about his OCD here, he's talking about his Tourette's!
Specifically, that aspect of Tourette's in which everything forbidden becomes compulsory (and everything compulsory becomes forbidden, for all you ODDfellows out there).
I'd say the same of Kiekegaard's piece, but I don't know that he had Tourette's.
posted by jamjam at 4:03 PM on September 19, 2011
No disease of the imagination...is so difficult of cure, as that which is complicated with the dread of guilt: fancy and conscience then act interchangeably upon us, and so often shift their places, that the illusions of one are not distinguished from the dictates of the other. If fancy presents images not moral or religious, the mind drives them away when they give it pain, but when melancholick notions take the form of duty, they lay hold on the faculties without opposition, because we are afraid to exclude or banish them. [My emphasis]
Johnson isn't talking about his OCD here, he's talking about his Tourette's!
Specifically, that aspect of Tourette's in which everything forbidden becomes compulsory (and everything compulsory becomes forbidden, for all you ODDfellows out there).
I'd say the same of Kiekegaard's piece, but I don't know that he had Tourette's.
posted by jamjam at 4:03 PM on September 19, 2011
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Hughes is pretty interesting if only for this line: Because of Hughes's great wealth, he was able to pay others to carry out his compulsive rituals for him.
I wonder how many "compulsive rituals" we as a society carry out due to the great wealth of some sick person.
posted by DU at 8:03 AM on September 19, 2011 [2 favorites]