Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Synopsis of Theoretical approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Acknowledgments, and provenance of Theoretical approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder
- 1 The natural history and definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder
- 2 Behavioural/learning accounts of OCD
- 3 Accounts of OCD based upon personality theories derived from the work of Pavlov
- 4 Janet on OCD
- 5 Psychodynamic approaches to OCD
- 6 Cognitive style/deficit approaches to OCD
- 7 Biological approaches to OCD
- 8 Concluding remarks
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
7 - Biological approaches to OCD
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Synopsis of Theoretical approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder
- Acknowledgments, and provenance of Theoretical approaches to obsessive-compulsive disorder
- 1 The natural history and definition of obsessive-compulsive disorder
- 2 Behavioural/learning accounts of OCD
- 3 Accounts of OCD based upon personality theories derived from the work of Pavlov
- 4 Janet on OCD
- 5 Psychodynamic approaches to OCD
- 6 Cognitive style/deficit approaches to OCD
- 7 Biological approaches to OCD
- 8 Concluding remarks
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
An increase of interest has recently been shown in biological approaches to OCD, and there are available a number of reviews/discussions of the findings from genetic, neuroanatomical, neurophysiological, neuropsychological and biochemical studies of OCD, as well as from studies of what have been presented as animal models of the disorder (for example, Turner, Beidel and Nathan, 1985; Rapoport and Wise, 1988; Insel, 1988; Pitman, 1989). This chapter will attempt to offer neither detailed comments on the quality of these biological findings, nor a comprehensive review of them. Instead, some of what have been claimed to be the most important of these findings will be briefly outlined, along with some of the suggestions biological theorists have offered regarding the psychological processes at work in OCD. Discussion will then focus on how powerful an argument in favour of a biological account of OCD these findings, if sound, could sustain.
Given the use of supposed animal models of OCD in some biological research, a few remarks concerning such models are in order here. (Animal models of OCD are also offered in other types of research – for example, de Silva, 1988, pp. 206–7). Reed (1985, p. 11) objects to the use of animal models in the study of OCD on the basis of his belief that the defining criteria for the disorder are phenomenological – for a thought or action to be symptomatic of the disorder, according to Reed, it must be experienced as senseless and be resisted, and it is unclear, in the case of any animal behaviour, on what grounds it could be argued that such behaviour has been experienced in this way (although see de Silva, 1988, p. 207).
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- Theoretical Approaches to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder , pp. 136 - 150Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996