Further consideration of the OC

The obsessive compulsive’s primary way of dealing with life is by thinking. As a young child the OC decided that to survive in the world one must think. It was chosen as the way to deal with things and solve problems. The opposite to this is the hysteric personality type who has decided to deal with the world by feeling, the young child decided that this is the way to deal with the world and to solve problems. Hence, to put it somewhat unkindly the hysteric is an ‘airhead’ who can’t think and the OC is ‘dead from the neck down’ who cannot feel.

Sometimes the hysteric and OC will marry each other because they are attracted by the other having the thing which they feel complements them and provides the thing they do not have. Needless to say they can end up in counselling at some point.

As with all personality types the goal is not to change the OC personality into something else. Firstly, what would it be to changed it into? Everybody has a personality and it must be of a particular type. It is impossible to not have a personality type. There is no such thing as the ‘normal’ personality type - which is probably a very good thing. Instead there are the following personality types:

Paranoid
Schizoid
Schizotypal
Antisocial
Borderline
Histrionic
Narcissistic
Avoidant
Dependent
Obsessive/compulsive

As you can see there is no ‘normal’ personality type defined.


Is it possible to have the normal personality type?


The goal is to modify how the personality type is expressed such that it is used in life to help the person rather than to cause them difficulties. For example the person piloting the plane of which I am a passenger I want to be an OC. The surgeon about to cut into me on the operating table I want to be of an obsessive compulsive personality type. As you can see there are occupations where it is a positive to be able to think, be very precise and orderly. On the other hand the hysteric can be a good people person because they can be outgoing, and the ‘life of the party’. They can work well in public relations or other occupations like sales.

OC and indecisiveness
Of course if not managed well then there can be a downside to each of the personality types. For example one feature of some OCs is indecisiveness where the thinking results in problems rather than having a positive outcome. The cause of this indecisiveness provides a good illustration of the decision making process. The decision making process is diagrammed below as a four part process.


The decision making process



The person initially receives information via the Adult ego state. Next they internally listen to what the Parent and Child ego states have to say about the information and then the Adult makes a decision based on these three pieces of information. For example the person may be deciding on whether to take a new job.

1. The Adult gets all the information like the job description, level of pay, place of work and so forth.
2.The Parent then makes its assessments about the job. It may think, is it a good job such as helping people by being a counsellor or a not so good job like becoming a tree logger that destroys the forrest.
3. Next the Child has its input. It may think that it likes the tree logging job because it pays much more and you get to be outside a lot rather than sitting in an office all day.
4. The Adult then assesses these three pieces of information and makes its decision.

In good decision making this process is meant to happen. With the OC it can fall down in two ways. Firstly the OC can overwhelm self by over researching. In part 1 of the process they simply get a mass of information. Due to their insecurity they think the more information they have the better informed decision they can make. What actually happens is they get swamped by a tsunami of information. For example in deciding which new car to buy the OC can get lost in all the technical information of the various models. As the saying goes, “They loose sight of the forrest for the trees”. They loose sight of the overall picture and find it hard to make a decision.


FC mud therapy for the OC?


The second way the OC can be indecisive involves the third part of the process. Due to their inability to access feelings and remain only with thinking they can loose contact with the Child ego state. If the choices are reasonably equal then the Free Child has the answer. The Free Child knows what is the right decision for the person. Those who are out of touch with the Free Child, like the OC can be, find it hard to make a decision because they lack the Free Child input.


OC and family relationships
I recall counseling a couple where the wife was an OC. She had strong needs for cleanliness and also strong contamination fears. The husband liked to garden but was never allowed to use any pesticides or chemicals in the garden. If he ever entered the kitchen or prepared any food he would be watched very closely. She tried to not make it obvious but he knew he was being closely watched on everything he did in the kitchen. She was very scared of possible contaminations by not cleaning correctly and ‘improper’ food preparation.

However the outcome of this was that his domestic life was significantly effected. He did not want her to feel anxious which meant he had to behave in very specific ways in his own home. This is an aspect of the OC that often does not get much consideration. The family dynamics aspect of treating the OC. The OC can end up with a very controlling presence in the family and home and those living there will have to adjust in some way. That can either be a sympathetic response where they become controlled in the home or there can be an angry response to the restraints where little consideration is given to the OCs fears.

This is a very real and difficult situation which can lead to marital and family breakdown where there are no winners. The OC has real and at times strong anxieties about what are usually mundane things in the home. On the other hand it is not fair for the various family members to have to live in a home that can be highly restrictive and indeed tense. When working with the OC, at times it is wise to meet with the other family members to find out the family situation and how they cope with it.



Obsessions and compulsions as a defense mechanism
Whenever I meet a client who tells me how they are constantly on the go, always doing things and never seems to have any spare time the first thing I think is, “What are they hiding from”. One way to avoid painful feelings or memories is to distract self. If one has a very full and busy life that can be a technique for distraction. Another way to do it is to have obsessive thinking. One way to keep painful feelings out of the conscious is to repress them with obsessive thinking. There is no space left for them to come up into the conscious.

The counselling approach here is clear and is often needed with the OC. Ask the client,
“If you stopped obsessing what would happen?”
“If you had to sit still and not do any thing what would happen?”

Most report some kind of feeling would come up which they are trying to avoid. With most OC client’s the therapist is wanting them to start feeling and expressing their emotions. If they achieve this then they tend to start to relax more and the obsessions and compulsions lessen.

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Magical thinking & the obsessive compulsive personality type

The person believes his thoughts, words or actions will in some way cause a specific outcome that defies the normal laws of cause and effect. For example a man believes that if he prays three time at night that will prevent his mother from dying. A woman believes that if she checks the doors three times at night then she will be safe.

Magical thinking may be part of ideas of reference or may reach delusional proportions when the individual maintains a firm conviction about the belief despite clear evidence to the contrary. Magical thinking is found normally in children and with the OC personality type.

Magical thinking is a battle between the grown up Adult ego state (A2) and the Adult ego state in the Child ego state (A1) sometimes known as the Little Professor ego state. The young child is born without an A2 ego state, all it has is its Child ego state.



Thus all the thinking it does is via the A1 or Little Professor ego state which means it will at times have quite illogical thoughts and come to quite bizarre conclusions and decisions. The Adult (A2) is not really fully formed until adolescence. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development has shown this. For example it is not until the age of about 8 years that a child finally realizes that death is not reversible. Up to that time it thinks death is a reversible process. This clearly is magical thinking and thus would be seen as a function of the A1 ego state not the A2.

Most grownups eventually form a strong A2 ego state and thus go through life without odd thoughts and beliefs about the facts of the world. However we never loose the A1 ego state, it remains with us until the day we die. So all grownups have the ability to have child like magical thinking.

Superstition is a good example of this. We all know that touching wood will not make good luck befall on us, however we all touch the wood anyway, (just in case). The same for black cats and walking under ladders. Most of us do not believe it has any effect but we avoid walking under ladders, (just in case).

However the magical thinking we all have is sometimes not so banal. People can at times spend significant sums of money based on magical thinking. Some beauty treatments have no scientific basis for them but people will spend significant money on them because they believe them to work. Some skin treatments and mud packs are of this kind. Conspiracy theories may also involve magical thinking that is not logical. Some believe that Lady Diana of the UK was either killed by MI5 or the egyptian mafia rather than her simply dying in a motor vehicle accident. Magical thinking is particularly susceptible to the phenomena of group think.



In group think people start to believe the same illogical thing, because others around them believe the same thing which makes them more secure that their thinking must be true. When conspiracy theorists get together to discuss their theories, they find others have the same magical thinking which makes it more true in their minds. “The end is nigh” groups can also be of this kind, where a group of people have the same magical thinking. Because others around them believe the same that makes it more true in the mind of each individual. The phenomena of group think can particularly happen with magical thinking.

Every “The end is nigh” group has been wrong so far (but beware the next one may be true!). Often they have an elaborate belief system about why the end is nigh that is based on significant evidence which they can produce or explain how it works. The point being that significant thinking has been engaged in before the conclusion that the end is nigh is reached. It is not simply based on a whim or a hunch.



Magical thinking is be no means solely for the neurotic and the disturbed. We all can and do engage in magical thinking because we all have that ego state in our personality. Many normal good members of society can have significant areas in their life that are based on magical thinking.

However the OC personality type in particular uses magical thinking especially with compulsive behaviors and it shows how the A1 and A2 can coexist at the same time in the personality. A client recently reported to me an elaborate ritual on checking if a door was locked. He would check the door could not be opened by trying to turn the knob to open the door. He would then walk to the other side of the room, turn around, look at the knob walk back to it and try it again. He did this three times and then he felt satisfied it was locked.

He knew clearly in his Adult ego state how illogical this was which caused him even more distress. However if he did not do the ritual he knew he would feel considerable disquiet and would have this constant urge to finally complete the ritual. The magical thinking was that if the ritual was performed then he could be sure the door was locked. His A1 was stronger in the personality than the A2 with regards to this specific piece of behavior.


OC personality type - cleanliness, perfectionism, orderliness, control.



Obsessive thoughts may also involve magical thinking. A long term client recently attended an appointment in great distress. The local council that morning sprayed herbicide along the street outside her house to kill weeds on the side of the road. She was convinced that could have been contaminated by the poisonous spray before she had time to close all the windows and that she will become quite ill and possibly die.

The fact that the council has been doing this for the last 20 years and no one before had ever reported getting ill had little effect. The fact that there was no wind and the sprayers are very close to the ground had little effect to reduce her angst. The fact the government health standards make sure there is no way such herbicides sprayed the way they are would ever contaminate anyone also had little effect for her.

Her Adult (A2) acknowledged all these as true but still she felt great distress about being contaminated because there was still a possibility that it could have somehow (magically) occurred. The A1 thinking dominated the A2 in this instance and she thought about it obsessively over the next week. Such A1 based contamination fears are common in the OC personality type.


OC - pro ana


Obsessive/compulsive
I have to feel in control of life and myself so I will be orderly and perfectionistic
Drivers: Be perfect, Be strong
Injunctions: Don’t enjoy, Don’t get your needs met, Don’t be a child
Life position: I-U+
Strokes given out: Positive conditional

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