PSYCHODYNAMIC EXPLANATIONS OF OCD

By raya bidshahri

RECAP ACTIVITY

Discuss with your partners and answer the following:

Who was Freud? What did he believe?

What is the psychodynamic definition of abnormality?

Yo

IN BRIEF....

Psychodynamic theories of OCD stress that obsessions and compulsions are signs of unconscious conflict that you might be trying to suppress, resolve or cope with. These conflicts arise when an unconscious wish (usually related to a sexual or aggressive urge) is at odds with socially acceptable behavior.

With OCD the main conflict is between the id and the ego. The id produces

impulses that provoke anxiety, while the ego tries to reduce the anxiety by using defence mechanisms. Id impulses

can take the form of obsessive thoughts and the ego defence mechanisms take

the form of counterthoughts or compulsive behaviour.

!It has been suggested that when these conflicts are extremely repulsive or distressing, you can only deal with them indirectly by transferring the

conflict to something more manageable such as hand-washing, checking or

ordering.

BAD TOILET TRAINING =

OCDFreud believed that OCD is the result

of fixation at the anal stage of development, when children are going through toilet training. Children at this stage are obtaining their sexual gratification from bowel movements,

while their parents are trying to teach them to delay this gratification. If

parents overuse punishment, or are too harsh when toilet training children

may develop aggressive id impulses and become messy, aggressive and stubborn.

If parents deal with this by making the child feel shameful and dirty they will then have a counter-desire to control the

id impulses. The result of this is an anally retentive personality The obsessions, therefore, come from the desire

to be messy, while the compulsions come from the need to control this desire

DOES THIS MAKE SENSE?!!

In your groups, evaluate the theory and write it's strengths/weaknesses down on your papers

Milby and Weber 1991 Studied Freud's theory and found no clear link between potty-training conflicts and people with OCD in comparison to a control group.

Other research......

Rachman and Hodgson 1980 Also found no relationship between 'anal' personality traits and those of OCD. Clinical

studies were found to prove that some people with OCD had the personality traits, but many do not show these traits, and many who have them do not go on to have OCD in later life.