The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing
The Experience and Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
by Judith L. RapoportObsessive-Compulsive Disorder has been known for over a century. Freud wrote of it and claimed to cure it. Psychoanalysis didn't do much for OCs. People with OCD mostly hid their problem if possible, and OCD was thought to be rare. Surveys taken in the 70s suggested otherwise. Medication and therappy became available that could successfully decrease obsession and compulsion in some people with OCD. A show aired on television about OCD and its treatments in 1987, and viewers sent in responses for months. This book contains the stories of people with OCD, families where a father and a son have OCD, stories showing treatments, stories displaying different expressions of OCD, and some analysis of them. It also contains deeper thought on the nature of OCD, and whether it is related to Tourette's, and what it has been called in the past.
The book has short chapters, divided into 5 sections, and it demarcates topics well. The stories in this book are mostly about boys and men. Rapoport says that in children, OCD is much more common among boys, but equal among adults. From her stories' subjects, I would have assumed that OCD is very rare in women and girls. The book includes an index as well as two appendices about the Catholic view of OCD and the Jewish view of OCD.
The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing was published in 1989, but it continues to be quoted in books about OCD written now.
Happy reading.
