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Anonymous
2016-04-06 22:34:57 Post No. 27684181
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Anonymous
2016-04-06 22:34:57
Post No. 27684181
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"This is a mad disease, surely. I don't think the wildest psychiatric phantasy could have invented anything like it, and if we did not see it every day with our own eyes we could hardly bring ourselves to believe in it. Now do not imagine you can do anything for such a patient by advising him to distract himself, to pay no attention to these silly ideas, and to do something sensible instead of his nonsensical practices. This is what he would like himself; for he is perfectly aware of his condition, he shares your opinion of his obsessional symptoms, he even volunteers it quite readily.
Only he simply cannot help himself; the actions performed in an obsessional condition are supported by a kind of energy which probably has no counterpart in normal mental life. Only one thing is open to him-he can displace and exchange; instead of one silly idea he can adopt another of a slightly milder character, from one precaution or prohibition he can proceed to another, instead of one ceremonial rite he can perform another. He can displace his sense of compulsion, but he cannot dispel it.
This capacity for displacing all the symptoms, involving radical alteration of their original forms, is the main characteristic of the disease; it is moreover, striking that in this condition the opposite -values(polarities) pervading mental life appear to be exceptionally sharply differentiated. In addition to compulsions of both positive and negative character, doubt appears in the intellectual sphere, gradually spreading until it gnaws even at what usually held to be certain."
