The misconceptions about OCD are not all new. In the Middle Ages, for example, the Catholic Church thought that the symptoms of OCD were brought on by the devil. Unfortunately, things did not get any better as time progressed. Many years later in Victorian times, OCD sufferers were mocked as insane (Hollander, 1999). OCD even made an appearance in a classic piece of literature. In his play Macbeth, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth was a textbook example of someone with OCD. Her character however was a madwoman, whose compulsive hand washing gave her lines like "Out damn spot! Out I say!" (Hollander, 1999). This type of public ridicule only added to the pain of those with OCD.

ue adults, it can start very early in childhood, and it impacts every aspect of what we know as normal life. A few years ago, a young girl appeared on an episode of Oprah to tell her story.

As you can see, OCD is a proven medical condition that affects the lives of many people all over the world. However, there can be a point of where certain rituals and superstitions can characterize a perfectly healthy individual as someone who is sick with OCD. Professional baseball player Nomar Garciapara fixes his batting gloves twice for each hand and taps his feet six times before he enters the batter’s box. This behavior can be seen as obsessive and compulsive when in actuality it is just another silly superstition. Everyone has their own little rituals, but that doesn’t mean that they have OCD. I know personally that every time I go to take a free throw I bounce the ball three times, spin the ball twice in my hands and then I shoot. This behavior can be characterized as a disorder but if tested, I would show up negative for the disorder. Everyone apparently has some degree of OCD. So I guess there are thin lines between those individuals diagnosed with OCD and those who aren’t. This disorder is only diagnosed based on a certain degree of behavior since all people possess some characteristics of this disorder.

A more concrete cause, however, is that OCD tends to run in families. Judith Rapoport, in writing her book found that some of her patients shared their disorder with their children (Rapoport, 1989). When Marc Summers founds out that he had OCD, and began to talk to his psychologist about it, he came to a startling realization. The neatness of his house and his grandmother's house was the result of the disorder that he shared with his mother, father, and grandmother (Summers, 1999). While gene research has come quite a long way recently, the innovations have done little to help isolate the genes that cause OCD. This is because there are different varieties of OCD, each caused by a different set of several genes. Even before the recent genetic advances, the influence of genetics in the cause of OCD was clear. Judith Rapoport stated that" There is no question that the disease runs in families", and she even went as far as to call it "hereditary" in some cases (Rapoport, 1989). Hopefully with more discoveries about the human gene being made every day, it will not be long before the genes that cause OCD can be isolated.

The other half of the disorder is made up of compulsions. Compulsions are the response to the anxiety created by obsessions; they are the actual things or thoughts that a person with OCD does or thinks ritualisticall

Some topics in this essay:
Lady Macbeth, Jack Nicholson's, Judith Rapoport, Nomar Garciapara, Eric Hollander, Marc Summers, People OCD, Unfortunately OCD, SRI OCF, OCD OCF, summers 1999, rapoport 1989, people ocd, ocf 2000, cause ocd, hollander 1999, judith rapoport, dsm 1994, shakespeare's lady macbeth, life ocd, people familiar, genes cause ocd, rapoport 1989 obsessions, compulsions people familiar,