Obsessive compulsive personality disorder

Obsessive compulsive personality disorder… Let us have a look at the diagnostic criteria. They busy themselves with excessive details, rules, lists, organizing or programming to the extent that the actual purpose gets lost in the process. They display a perfectionism that makes the completion of the task difficult.

Indecisiveness is their main characteristic. They are unable to show initiative. Starting or finishing something is a serious problem for them. In matters of morals, correctness or values they listen too much to the voice of their conscience and show no flexibility. They find themselves unable to part with old or valueless items and gather these even though they have no special value for them. They are tight-fisted. They are stubborn… Like all other personality disorders it starts at an early age and they are “egosyntonic”. That is to say, they are not distressed by the situation. This is the reason why in order for them to respond to psychotherapy it is first expected that they feel distress. The process is distributed over time. You cannot tell if they love or hate. They are continuously in a flat and neutral emotion. They have an unbelievable amount of accumulated knowledge. They become intellectuals. For example, they know everything about love but are unable to fall in love. I suggest that you watch Jack Nicholson’s film “As Good As It Gets”. It is a very well prepared film with a comedy flavour. As you can see, it is very difficult to live with obsessive compulsive personality disorder. Luckily the last thing that would come to their mind is to inflict emotional or physical harm on another person. Their conscience is so hard that they feel terrible guilt towards those they harm. I would like to remind that there are no troubles without remedy. I believe that psychotherapy and particularly group therapy is beneficial. I also would like to mention that I drafted this article upon requests I received from you and with great pleasure.