The inner world of an obsessive-compulsive disorder patient

In this society, the pressure on young people is increasing, and many mental illnesses are beginning to spread, such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other special mental illnesses. For mental illness, conventional drug treatments often do not play a key role, and treatment requires analysis from the spiritual world. For patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is even more important to understand their inner world and make them willing to get close to them in order to better provide psychological counseling.

We are able to identify the various obsessive-compulsive symptoms very well and describe each symptom in detail. However, the patient's way of existence still seems so strange and distant, completely different from our own. The patient is different from us, not so much in his inner conflict (because we have also had similar conflicts) but rather in his clear mind, which presents his entire abnormality so clearly to us that we are amazed. As long as you stay with them, this wonder will never stop.

The patient knows that he is sick, but he neither takes medicine nor seeks medical treatment. Even if he does seek medical treatment, he does not believe that his illness can really be cured. His mind sees clearly that the perfection he pursues is impossible, his worries are unreal, his repetitive actions are futile, and he is fighting against windmills like Don Quixote. The patient is half hypochondriacal and half dissociative.

Well-educated obsessive-compulsive patients often describe themselves more profoundly than doctors who have just started working in psychiatry: "My life is nothing but a fight of a trapped beast"; "I am a person who has no solution! I go to the mountain of tigers knowing there is a tiger, but I can't even beat a dog, and I am particularly afraid of tigers. This is my tragedy"; "I have been nailed to the past and can't face reality at all"; "The silkworm will not stop spinning silk until it dies, and the candle will not stop shedding tears until it turns to ashes. This is about love, but I use it to wash my hands", and so on.

Indeed, intellect and rationality are of no avail without certain experiences. Lacking a sense of completion, the patient is compelled to repeat himself endlessly, even though he knows clearly that this is unnecessary, ridiculous, and even criminal. Whether in English, German or Chinese, the meanings of the two words "precision" and "cleanliness" are closely related. Likewise, physical uncleanness symbolizes spiritual uncleanness, which is the same in many cultures. The breaking up of actions into small fragments prevents the patient from directing his energies into the normal practice of task-oriented self-development. Stagnation and congestion mean corruption, and it is impossible for the patient to purify himself. All this shows that patients lack the experience of looking forward to a better future. On the other hand, there is a lack of sense of reality: no matter what the patient does, he has to add at least one extra action, such as stamping his feet, spitting, or saying a word, to make himself feel that what he has done has actually been done. However, this impression is not strong or fades quickly, so the patient has to repeat it.

The act of submission is accompanied by inner resistance, or the heart has already surrendered when refusing to act. One patient said: “I felt forced to sign a document that I objected to”. Coercion and counter-coercion come from the same "I". The self is both the object of force and the subject of force. In the long run, everything becomes unreal and amorphous, with confrontation being the only real experience. The world has become a chaos, which German scholars call ungestalt, which literally means un-form in English and "invisible" in Chinese. It is hostile to life, because life is a "form" that is constantly forming. Due to the hostility that covers everything, life becomes "invisible" and the self becomes a shadow, because what is in opposition to the "invisible" is only the "invisible". The world of an obsessive-compulsive person has a "physiognomic" quality, and almost everything is a bad omen. Some people say that people with OCD live in a "counterworld." Gebsattel believes that the world of people with obsessive-compulsive disorder is composed of forces that are hostile to "form" and are called "anti-form" (anti-eidos, the Greek word eidos means "form"). It is because the obsessive-compulsive patient is threatened with losing his or her "form" and losing himself or herself that the symbol of disfiguring power is able to control the patient's imagination and determine his or her actions. According to Gebsattel, by reconstructing the world of "anti-form", the various symptoms and behaviors of obsessive-compulsive patients can be linked and understood. This is an example of phenomenological reconstruction of the patient's world.