At first when psychologists first started diagnosing people with OCD they were convinced that it was not only a very rare disorder, but that it was caused by modeling to the extreme, mostly for kids whose parents were abusive. According to Sigmund Freud, a person with such a past is then liable to go through unexplainable ritualistic motion often times unconsciously which then debilitate the person from functioning in a normal society. He also says that there are times when we fail to control the subconscious which would influence us to commit parapraxes (slips of the tongue). Also, that the unchecked subconscious then becomes a sort of channel for the person’s past traumatic experi

As years have gone on there have been more technological advances that have brought on new ideas about OCD. Both ideas are used today as a major part in treating OCD. There really is not one idea that is right or wrong because no madder what kind of treatment someone receives it usually involves some piece of the other idea. So in turn OCD could be considered something that is caused by both the environment and neurological factors.

On the contrary psychologists are now starting to think that OCD is mainly a neurochemical imbalance, a lot like clinical depression. National Institution Of Mental Heath(NIMH) supported psychologists have used a device called ,positron emission tomography (PET) scanner, to study the brains of patients with OCD. PET is a brain imaging technique that uses a radioactive tracer to show chemical activity of the brain.(Rauch 44) At Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Dr. Scott Rauch, director of psychiatric neuroimaging, has been using PET and other scans in psychiatric illnesses. He and his colleagues scan patients first, while they are resting, then they touch them with feared objects that induce obsessions. Rauch has noted that the abnormal brain circuits involve nerve pathways from the orbital frontal cortex (behind the eyes) to the caudate nucleus (part of the basal ganglia) and thalamus.(Rauch 50) They have obtained findings from PET scans suggesting that OCD patients have patterns of brain activity that differ from those of people without mental illness or with some other mental illness.(NIMH) The scans showed abnormal chemical activity in the region of the brain that

Some topics in this essay:
Sigmund Freud, Scott Rauch, Steven Phillipson, , According Forman, Marc Pincus, Mental HeathNIMH, OCD PET, University California, behavioral methods, brain activity, pet scans, five times, ocd caused, washing hands, severe ocd, chemical activity,