Tarrying with the Negative: A Second Hegelian Perspective on OCD Outline of the Problem Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is marked by obsessions, intrusive images, waves of anxiety, and rituals — sometimes visible, sometimes entirely internal — that feel compulsory even when they are not truly willed. Driven by absolutist and non-negotiable core beliefs or fixed ideas — ‘I  must  be certain’, ‘I can  never  be wrong’, for instance — the condition becomes a relentless overs

The Obstructed Dialectic: An Hegelian Perspective on Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental disorder characterized by inviolable beliefs, mental intrusions and repetitive behaviors that together create a cycle of fixation and doubt. What the sufferer seeks is the solid ground of certainty; yet in pursuing it he undermines that very aim. Each compulsion, meant to secure assurance, ultimately drives certainty further away. And still, there

Private Language In / creasing thought, the self   doubles / folds  inwards,  suppose a private language  against the world’s shared grammar —   self-authored, a book   written for no .  one.    A page     torn away, stains     in the margins, a footnote    wrongly numbered, the letter ‘i’    faintly printed.      Such is the pain of the man  who yearns  for his whole self   between the covers of biography   and meets only   estrangement.

A minute before midnight, the owl of Minerva watches today grow fat behind time’s horizon. At twelve he blinks. One eye for the night of...