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EVEN THE MOST CASUAL clinical appraisal of the obsessional neurotic indicates that disturbances of both affect and ideation exist and are interrelated. It has become customary in psychoanalytic literature to view the cognitive factors found in this syndrome as secondary to pathology in the affective or instinctual life of the patient. My purpose in this paper is to describe certain cognitive disorders in the obsessional that appear to be core phenomena, more central to the obsessional way of living than has been considered heretofore. Further, I shall attempt to relate these cognitive disorders to the psychodynamics of obsessionalism and to indicate the therapeutic directions stimulated by these observations.
The stylistic presentation of the obsessional is well known to psychoanalytic literature. The phenomenological description of this syndrome offered by Freud, 4 Abraham, 1 and Jones 7 remains the base for all psychoanalytic assessments of the syndrome. The obsessional presents himself in a stilted, formal, rigid, and inhibited manner. He overinvests logic and intellectualized formulations about experience. He is stubborn, pedantic, and difficult to engage in meaningful interpersonal situations. In surface expression, his style seems devoid of vitality, warmth, and spontaneous feeling. He is given to superstitions and private rituals which appear to defy common sense. He has a deep