Behavior Therapy with Obsessive-Compulsives

Abstract

Clinical accounts of obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) have appeared in the literature for well over 100 years. Esquirol first described this syndrome in 1838, but it was not until the beginning of this century that attempts were made to formally document and define it (Janet, 1903; Lewis, 1935; Schneider, 1925). Traditional conceptualizations of OCD have generally included both cognitive and behavioral components. For example, Pollitt (1956) suggested that this disorder is characterized by a recurrent or persistent idea, thought, image, feeling, impulse or movement which is accompanied by a sense of subjective compulsion and desire to resist it, the event being recognized by the individual as foreign to his personality and into the abnormality of which he has insight. (p. 842)