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 overseer,

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.

On the Point of Vanishing     Cogito ergo ends with a sum   beyond my reckoning:     Thoughts add up   and multiply   exponentially like...

The soul of the king an out-of-tune lyre with harpstrings for guts – many sharps and flats. Sent by the LORD the holy pneuma's hand scrapes unholy noise. It maddens the king with dissonant thought – the fatal vibration of blood in the heart until he is dead.

There is (if you care to know), a flower of folly growing On my brain, on the surface of the matter’s deep. Fit for the Fire, its fate is...

In my mind a series of irrational numbers, of non-repeatable fractions without end. Something doesn’t add up. I am divided,...

Thinking of Being without Heaviness or Depth Part 1: Being and heaviness People who suffer from depression often complain of a feeling of heaviness; not just in the emotional or mental sense, but as something physical — a visceral sensation pressing on the chest or wrapping itself around the body and the legs. Some sufferers say it is like having lead weights on their legs. Among the DSM-IV criteria for atypical depression is: “Leaden paralysis (i.e. heavy, leaden feelings i