Davis, Chapter 1, Origins of Obsession

Davis certainly goes into great length to explain the origins of obsession as a mental disorder.  I found it interesting that some felt almost every disease could be called nervous so long ago and that is still true in a sense today.  I often hear that having a positive attitude during times of sickness can help with the diagnosis.  Before obsession came to be a "mental" term, the oldest terms, in English, were lunacy, melancholy and idiocy - these are all totally encompassing while occurring, which can also be said of OCD.

From the reading, it seems as though times really haven't changed all that much in a sense.  Davis talks about how once the quartet came to be, many more people felt they were affected, rather than the smaller amount who were affected by madness, once they heard about it.  It reminds me of the previous reading we had in which there was a discussion about how so many people come out and seek treatment once they see some sort of media coverage about a specific diagnosis they think they might have. 

 It is amazing to me how far we have come in really a relatively short time in terms of treatment.  Physicians used to think that they could use the same treatments for the body as for the mind.  We have read about people, only thirty years ago, going through brain surgery to try to "cure" OCD.  What these poor people must have gone through!!  I appreciated the line where Davis states "Obsession becomes both the symptom and the cause if the mental disease."  How hard it must be for a clinician to try to help his or her patients.  I don't have a psych background, but to try to treat something that is both a symptom and a cause must be very difficult - in a sense, it is amazing how far the field has come up to this point.

It is significant to me on a personal level that this chapter discusses the different levels of mental disease.  I was discussing our class with a friend of mine who is a social worker/therapist.  She has her own personal issues and is always worried about her kids getting or being sick, to the point where it can be a bit annoying.  I hate saying that it is annoying because she had a traumatic experience with one of her children and ever since then she has been like this.  When I was telling her about this class she said her own therapist told her she had OCD without the compulsion, we then discussed how her feeling were intrusive, inappropriate, unwanted and recurrent.  The only difference is that she does not have the compulsion that goes along with OCD.  Obsession is hard enough to deal with, nevermind having to deal with compulsion too.   In any case, I can totally understand how there are many different levels of mental disease, be it partial, fully encompassing, or any level in between.