Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The ritual moment of social death

Parish

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.

Citation

Parish. (2018). Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: The ritual moment of social death. Anthropology Today, 34(1), https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8322.12414

• 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