Lots of superstitions seem to feature a sort of 'if X, then Y' sort of thinking, linking two unrelated things (If you break a mirror, you have bad luck for seven years) as well as taking nonsensical actions in order to prevent disaster (if you knock on wood three times after saying something aloud, you can prevent a 'jinx'). I've noticed that these lines of thought seem similar to those that occur within people who have been diagnosed with obessive compulsive disorder. How is thinking that knocking on wood three times in order to prevent a jinx different than thinking you have to walk around your house three times to prevent it from catching fire while you sleep?
I assume that the separation must be more than just 'one is commonly accepted'. Is it simply that in order to be diagnosed OCD, it has to have a profound negative impact on one's life? Is an obsession with these sort of superstitions a sign of OCD?
These superstitions are only unrelated if you don't understand them. The breaking of a mirror had to do with the old idea that you could see your soul in a mirror, and that souls renewed themselves every seven years (roman belief, hence the division of the lifespan into seven-year periods). Breaking a mirror was related to an older belief, which involved looking at your image in water. If the image looked distorted, ill would befall.
Knocking on wood was a pious Christian action to invoke the wood of the cross.
And so forth. Rather than seeing superstitions as linking two unrelated things, you need to understand them in cultural context.
Certainly, few people now remember why these things were done, but equally few people still do them. When the cultural underpinning falls away, so does the practice.
OCD, on the other hand, is a fascinating disorder whose invariance across cultures argues, to my mind, that it has a significant biological underpinning.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is an anxiety disorder that varies in how much it is disturbing for a person's life. OCD serves the aim of binding anxiety to certain intrusive thougths (I have sinned against the Holy Goast) or actions (I have to wash my hands 20 times per day) or both. Medication and cognitive behavioral therapy help.
The big difference is that OC people just cannot get satisfied with their superstitious and ritual behavior. And therefore have to go on with it to an absurd length. That is the main thing to explain. Another difference is that they have to fight very peculiar imagined risks, not just the common risks of many people. Why that is the case is another thing to explain. Still another difference is that they may remain unconvinced of having quit themselves of trivial jobs, whose results are normally easy to judge: again a puzzling thing to explain.
"Still another difference is that they may remain unconvinced of having quit themselves of trivial jobs, whose results are normally easy to judge: again a puzzling thing to explain".
Can you elaborate, I do not understand?
Thank you all so much for your answers! Does anyone know if people with OCD have any tendency to adopt superstitions and fixate on them?
To Beatrice: Checking whether the frontdoor has really been closed is a trivial job with an easy to check result: yet a part of the OC patients cannot become convinced. Looking whether you have extinguished the light is as simple job: yet a part of the OC patients have to return to the room time and again to see whether they really did. In due time they may not even be able to convince themselves when they are still in the room, which is already dark. Etc.
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