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.

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.

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