Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

October 16, 1962. VARIANTS OF COMIC CARICATURE AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO OBSESSIVE-COMPULSIVE PHENOMENA. Victor H. Rosen, M.D.

Obsessions are grotesque parodies without laughter and compulsions are ritual travesties devoid of fun. An illustration of the characteristics of travesty in an obsessional neurosis is the Rat Man's celebrated attempt to repay a small debt to a fellow army officer that becomes a charade of misdirected punctiliousness. Comic situations effect pleasure, as we know from Freud, through an apt bringing together of elements—essentially those of the attacker, the victim, and the motive for the attack—that saves mental energy which can then be released through laughter. Dr. Rosen suggests that, in addition, the comic converts bound energy into free energy so that it may become available for discharge. Also, aggression is released under socially acceptable circumstances through the use of a victim who holds little interest other than as an object of laughter. Obsessive-compulsive phenomena, on the other hand, keep the essential elements from flowing together in comic release by the distance of the observing function and the defense of isolation. Then, too, for obsessive-compulsive patients, the torment of a victim is their central objective rather than the pleasure of an audience. In both comic distortion and obsessional phenomena, sadomasochistic pregenital relations are found in limitless combinations and permutations.

An example of victimizing within the analytic situation is the obsessive-compulsive's penchant for making a caricature of the analytic rule by overliteral pursuit of it in a way that reduces the inexperienced analyst to exasperation. An example from fiction is Good Soldier Schweik who humbles the high command of the Austrian Army by his insistence upon literal interpretation of 'regulations'.

These characteristics of obsessions and compulsions suggest variations in treatment procedure—given the appropriate circumstances—which