Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 July 2009
Of 49 compulsive ritualizers one-third perceived their obsessive thoughts as rational and felt that their rituals warded off some unwanted or feared event (the content of their obsessions). The more bizarre the obsessive belief the more strongly it was defended and 12% of cases made no attempt to resist the urge to ritualize. Neither fixity of belief nor resistance to compulsive urges were related to duration of illness. Patients with bizarre and fixed obsessive beliefs responded as well to treatment (all but three received exposure), as did patients whose obsessions were less bizarre and recognized as senseless. There was no difference in outcome between patients who initially found it hard to control their obsessions or never resisted the urge to ritualize and those who initially could control obsessions or resist rituals. One year after starting treatment, patients whose obsessions and compulsions had improved with treatment recognized their irrationality more readily and controlled their compulsive urges more easily. Beliefs appeared to normalize as a function of habituation.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.