%0 Journal Article
%T Obsessionality & compulsivity: a phenomenology of obsessive-compulsive disorder
%A Damiaan Denys
%J Philosophy, Ethics, and Humanities in Medicine
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1747-5341-6-3
%X This article is translated from Dutch, originally published in [Handbook Obsessive-compulsive disorders, Damiaan Denys, Femke de Geus (Eds.), (2007). De Tijdstroom uitgeverij BV, Utrecht. ISBN13: 9789058980878.]At consultation a young mother explains that she constantly thinks about strangling her daughter. The thought occurred without any apparent cause shortly after the birth of her daughter and is always present. "When I'm alone at home and I see my daughter sleeping in her crib then I can see myself strangling her. I'm terribly shocked by the thought and I am very frightened by it. If nobody holds me back, I could murder my daughter. I don't want to harm her, but there is no guarantee that I never will. I can't control myself any longer. I thought I was a good mother, but the fact that I think about it says something about who I really am. It shows that perhaps I don't love my daughter enough. I don't want to think about it but I'm not able to keep the thought out of my mind. The harder I resist, the stronger the thought is. In the beginning I occasionally thought about it, but now I think about it all the time. Though I realize that the thought is absurd, I can't stop it" The patient is deeply embarrassed and feels very guilty. Nobody knows that she has these thoughts, not even her husband. Given that she does not trust herself she does not want to be alone with her daughter. "Whenever the thought occurs, I wash my hands. It seems that I can rinse this terrible thought away causing the anxiety to decrease. I have to do it exactly 8 times and am not allowed to touch anything else while washing or to think about my daughter. If I don't do it properly, I have to start all over again. It's becoming increasingly worse. Now I wash my hands twelve times a day for about twenty-five minutes. At the moment I find washing my hands more annoying than the thought itself. It takes a long time and I become very anxious when I don't have the facilities to wash my hands."In thi
%U http://www.peh-med.com/content/6/1/3