Obsessive-compulsive symptomatology: a goal-directed response to anticipated traumatization?
Through the use of case material, this article traces the evolution of one individual's potentially adaptive response to traumatic stressors into obsessive-compulsive illness. The following discussion offers a conceptualization of trauma-induced obsessive-compulsive symptomatology that presents the phenomena as a predictable pattern of traumatic antecedents, anticipatory arousal, and a subsequent goal-directed motivational state to prevent anticipated traumatization. However, this hypothesis depends upon an expansion of our diagnostic understanding of traumatization to include interpersonal threat and how it might be symbolized by the individual seeking relief.
Adaptation, Psychological↗