Reading focus
Syllabus: Why Do Obsessions and Compulsions Persist?
Examine fear, disgust, and incompleteness during particular symptom episodes.
Why you’re reading it. Test the reach of the earlier appraisal account beyond a single motive or symptom theme.
A question to consider. How would your explanation differ for repeated washing driven by feared illness, disgust, or an unfinished feeling, and how could you test that distinction?
Why this reading
The same visible ritual can accompany different experiences. Cervin and colleagues ask young people about feelings during symptoms, bringing incompleteness and disgust into an account too easily centered on fear alone.
Before you read
Incompleteness is a felt lack of rightness or completion. A symptom dimension groups related presentations; it need not identify one cause. Reports about a particular episode differ from ratings of a general tendency.
Read for
- Compare the interview’s definitions with the experiences it allows participants to report.
- Examine what the anxiety comparison groups add, and how co-occurring difficulties complicate specificity.
Consider afterwards
- Two young people repeat an action, one fearing harm and one seeking a sense of completion. What evidence could distinguish their maintaining processes?
Editorial context
The study included 124 young people with OCD and 55 with social or generalized anxiety at one Swedish clinic. Retrospective interviews cannot establish that reported feelings cause repetition. The published primary-dimension counts and stated exclusions do not fully reconcile. Findings concern these assessed symptoms, not every repetitive behavior, autistic routine, or tic. The journal issue is dated 2021; online publication was in 2020.