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,

Uncommon One in the garden of statutes where rules multiply like weeds & stones lie about like scruples every step is a misstep in misadventure my ways are not steadfast nor my path clear fallen fruits ripen towards a crisis break a snail underfoot & the roses shiver disaster crush a flower with your heel & the frogs croak catastrophe offend the sun with a dismal glance & the heron broods at the water’s edge disturb a duck egg in the thick grass & the elms grow misty all

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

On the Point of Vanishing Cogito ergo ends with a sum beyond my reckoning: Thoughts add up and multiply exponentially like numbers. I must have miscalculated. It’s what happens when you cannot count on your own mind to make sense of the world. This time I’ll square the root - 100,000 to 316 to 18 to 4 to 2 to 1.4 to 1.2 to 1.1 to 1 - and keep on subtracting 1 to 0.5 to 0.1 … I arrive at a bare fraction of a thought, a mere variable

What is language? Where does it come from and what does it want (from us)?

Irrational Numbers In my mind a series of irrational numbers, of non-repeatable fractions without end. Something doesn’t add up. I am divided, incommensurable. I count on my intellect to calculate a solution but thoughts multiply endlessly and without purpose - an innumerable and undetermined infinity indifferent to sense. All this thinking-without-limits is a problem I cannot get my head around.