According to the cognitive model, Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is maintained by various belief factors such as an inflated sense of responsibility, perfectionism and an overestimation about the importance of thoughts. Despite much support for this hypothesis, there is a lack of understanding about the role of self-concept in the maintenance or treatment of OCD. Guidano and Liotti (1983) suggest that individuals who are ambivalent about their self-worth, personal morality and lovability use perfectionistic and obsessive compulsive behaviours to continuously restore self-esteem. This thesis develops a model of OCD that integrates self-ambivalence in the cognitive model of OCD. (For complete abstract open document)

Thesis (M. App. Psych.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Psychology, 1994? / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 69-74).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2004. / Advisor: Dr. Thomas E. Joiner, Jr., Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Psychology. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 23, 2004). Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Victoria University of Wellington, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Rowan University, 2005. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Canterbury, 2005. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 256-326). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / Compulsive hoarding is a serious disorder that causes significant impairment in the home. While compulsive hoarding has been traditionally associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), standard OCD treatments have been mostly ineffective for hoarding. Recent research has provided evidence that hoarding has a distinct profile that could indicate a separate disorder. Further understanding of hoarding may advance classification and treatment. One understudied aspect of hoarding is excessive acquisition. Acquisition behaviors in hoarding appear to share similarities with impulse control disorders. While preliminary research has suggested elevated impulsivity in those who hoard, prior studies have been inconsistent in their measurement of impulsivity. Also, the relationship between impulsivity and excessive acquisition behaviors remains unexplored. This study assessed impulsivity in hoarding (n = 32) and anxiety disorder (n = 32) participants using a multi-dimensional model of impulsivity. Participants underwent a diagnostic assessment and completed self-report forms and neuropsychological tasks measuring impulsivity. Participants also completed an experimental task to assess acquiring behaviors after a mood induction. Participants completed measures of affect and state impulsivity, before and after a negative or neutral mood induction. There were no significant differences between diagnostic groups on self-reported impulsivity levels. Significant between-group differences were found on several neuropsychological tasks. Those with hoarding had significantly poorer response inhibition and lowered levels of adaptive and maladaptive risk-taking than participants with anxiety disorders. A diagnosis of hoarding predicted these outcomes independent of social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, and major depressive disorder. In the acquisition task, the hoarding group acquired significantly more items than the anxiety disorder group but there was not a significant interaction effect with mood induction condition. The hoarding group had a significantly greater increase in state impulsivity across time but there was also not an interaction effect with mood induction condition. An analysis designed to assess whether state impulsivity mediated the relationship between negative affect and acquisition behaviors failed to find a significant indirect effect. Overall, study findings suggest differences in impulsivity for those who hoard as compared to those with an anxiety disorder. A continued emphasis on understanding impulsivity in hoarding could further diagnostic classification and treatment development. / 2031-01-02

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) contributes to significant distress and chronic individual and societal impairment (e.g., DuPont et al., 1995; Ruscio et al., 2010). Despite the effectiveness of existing exposure-based therapies, some clients do not achieve symptom reduction or remission (Öst et al., 2015). Thus, identification of the mechanisms of change in treatment and more focused interventions are warranted to improve intervention effectiveness (e.g., Zvolensky et al., 2006). Distress intolerance may be an important but understudied mechanism of change in treatment for OCD. The current study replicated and extended previous findings that were limited by a small sample size (Macatee & Cougle, 2015), lack of focus on OCD specifically (McHugh et al., 2014; Bornovalova et al., 2012; Williams et al., 2013), and the use of non-clinical participants (Cougle et al., 2011; Macatee & Cougle, 2015) by using a residential and intensive outpatient sample of patients diagnosed with OCD. The current study found that reductions in DI accounted for significant improvement in OCD severity beyond changes in biological sex, anxiety change, depression change. Further, reductions in DI significantly contributed to OCD treatment response. Limitations and future directions were discussed.

In this research I explore my Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) and make manifest equivalent experiences of it through art practice. I investigate my OCD through artistic enactments and test my equivalence of the framework obsessioncompulsion using installation art – an equivalence, which I suggest is a relationship between my embodied perception and my memory. My interpretation of equivalence contains characteristics that arguably align with common emotions of control and doubt, inflated sense of responsibility and fear of disaster, which, I suggest are accessible to an audience other than myself. As such, my artwork proposes that a viewer can experience my equivalence to some degree. I refer to writer David Batchelor's (1997) definition of equivalence as a starting point for this research, and question how my OCD reveals itself through memory and perception, by referring to Richard Shusterman's ideas regarding somaesthetic reflection (2008), Bergson's description of the structure of memory (2004), Paul Ricouer's link between memory and imagination (2006) and Gilles Deleuze's ideas regarding difference and repetition (2013). I also refer to theoretician Estelle Barrett and her ideas regarding “situated knowledge” (2010: 4-5) as a way to frame the subjective and personal nature of my artistic enquiry, regarding my equivalence of OCD. Within this thesis I place emphasis on art practice as a method of research and describe the processes I have used to explore my OCD and make manifest my equivalence. I refer to Clare Bishop’s (2005) phenomenological description of installation art and mimetic engulfment within this process as I consider them methods to reveal my equivalence, by making manifest the relationship between my memory and my perception, both of which are embodied experiences within my OCD. I discuss Ross G. Menzies and Padmal de Silva’s (2004) clinical definitions and descriptions of obsession, compulsion, memory deficit and checking, in addition to phenomenological and pragmatic ideas, regarding memory and perception, as a way to articulate my proposition that equivalence of my OCD is constructed of a interdependent relationship between two embodied experiences, which can be revealed through art practice. My research contributes to new knowledge as it suggests a new way of understanding OCD by employing a multi-disciplined approach to practice-led research.

Studies have shown that aberrant activity in some brain regions involved in the pathology of OCD overlaps similarly with individuals with addiction disorders. The reduced anxiety following a compulsion together with findings of diminished activation in the striatum during reward anticipation proposes a view of OCD being a behavior addiction. To investigate if there are consistent results across studies that support this view a systematic search of the literature was conducted. The keywords in the final search string used were: Obsessive-compulsive disorder, OCD, reward, risk, functional MRI, MRI, fMRI. Databases used for the search were Web of Science and PubMed. The inclusion criteria were studies that compared the neural activity during the anticipation phase of reward between OCD patients and healthy controls. The intervention and brain imaging used in the included studies were the monetary incentive delay task and fMRI. The main data extracted were the alterations in the striatum. Four studies were included in this review with inconsistent results. Three studies did not find any significant difference between OCD and healthy controls and therefore the findings in principle did not support the view of OCD being a behavior addiction. However, differences in study design between studies could be an explanation for the conflicting findings.