Autistic traits and Obsessive Compulsive Personality traits in OCD Patients

Abstract

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is characterized by obsessions and compulsions. The obsessions are recurrent thoughts, impulses, or images, which are intrusive and ego dystonic; they are related to basic fears or urges that are distressing to the individual, such as contamination, aggression, sex, religion/scrupulosity, order/symmetry, hoarding, or pathological doubt. The compulsions are repetitive behaviors, including mental acts that the individual feels compelled to perform to reduce the anxiety created by the obsessions. The compulsions are often performed in specific ways, and can result in elaborate rituals (Julien et al., 2007). Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) is characterized by concern with orderliness, perfectionism, excessive attention to details, mental and interpersonal control and a need for control over one’s environment at the expense of flexibility, openness to experience and efficiency. OCPD represents one of the commonest personality disorders but it has been the subject of comparatively little research, its nosological relationship with other disorders that involve obsessive– compulsive behavior remains