Escaping, forgetting and revisiting the scene: The post-traumatic compulsion to repeat in obsessive-compulsive disorder

Abstract

There are levels at which our cognitive structures are not so well developed and especially when we rely on auxiliary figures (usually parents) to help us deal with what is taking place in and around us. It proposes that the sense that is made or not made of these events within the environment contributes to the development of dramatic versions of their meaning. The paper also addresses to some extent the role of internal fantasy around an event in providing a bridge between the event and the rumination and rituals that develop. The repetition is then an expression of what happens to this event at an internal level and the forestalled process of deep accommodation to it. The central point of this paper is as follows: One of the many ways is which obsessive-compulsive disorder can be considered is as a kind of repetition in thought and action of something that has been experienced with substantial disturbance at a time removed from the period in which ruminations and rituals come to take the kind of prominence they typically do in the lives of these patients.