The Obsessive and Compulsive Experience- A Narrative Guide

This book is a wide ranging discussion and analysis of Obsessions and Compulsions written for lay people as well as clinicians. Through vivid clinical descriptions, the author brings together the many elements that make up the fabric of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He takes the reader through the development of descriptive, psychological, cognitive, behavioral, socio-cultural as well as complex neurobiological aspects of the condition. The patient is the center of his curiosity and deliberations and Dr. Yerevanian draws on many disciplines of human endeavor to understand what afflicts them and to shape a plan of treatment based on understanding their human predicament. In the process, he discusses how a psychiatrist learns and grows by interacting with patients who exhibit difficulties and disturbances in the most crucial human attributes such as thinking, decision making, executive functioning, forming beliefs, assessing danger and reward, modulating emotions and other fundamental human characteristics. Examining OCD not only teaches us about the disorder itself, but about the human mind and the human condition with all its vulnerabilities and strengths.