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Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The ritual moment of social death

Parish

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Abstract

This article is an ethnographic study of individuals self-diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) in Liverpool, UK. While much research on OCD has concentrated upon superstitious belief, psychosis and anxiety provoking disorder, the article focuses upon the relationship between the familiar and the strange in ordinary life, the ‘disquieting familiar’, captured by the Freudian idea of the uncanny. It investigates how misfortune, as opposed to psychological neurosis, becomes attached to mass-produced objects and routines – the obsessive touching of kitchen taps, the compulsive checking of bank cards – and how repetitive rituals enacted by individuals are revealing of the effort to prevent the emergence of apprehension concealed in everyday habitus and physical, concrete activity.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Nov 29, 2017
Publication Date Feb 1, 2018
Journal Anthropology Today
Print ISSN 0268-540X
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 34
Issue 1
DOI https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12414
Publisher URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-8322.12414

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