Compulsions: definition, causes and possible symptoms

These repetitive actions related to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder can dominate us.

There are people who, feeling frustrated for some reason, unconsciously perform a ritualized action through which they try to reduce their discomfort.

This kind of behavior reflect a psychological phenomenon known as compulsion..

What are compulsions?

The idea of what compulsions are can be defined slightly differently according to two different psychological approaches: psychoanalysis born with Sigmund Freud and cognitive-behavioral psychology.

Compulsions according to psychoanalysis

The concept of compulsion was widely used in the field of psychoanalysis, and from this approach it was understood that its meaning was that of a repetitive behavior that is used to give an outlet to the frustration of not being able to satisfy desires that are born in the most unconscious and passionate part of the mind.

Thus, compulsions would be ways of compensating for the impossibility of responding to an emotional desire while keeping the consciousness distracted and away from the true source of frustration. In this way, for the psychoanalytic approach, compulsion is a way of masking a need, the idea of which one tries to repress in order to whose idea one tries to repress so that it does not pass into the conscious part of the psyche.

But this deception does not correspond to reality, and in fact it is not effective to definitively end the need, since it is a superficial and momentary fix; that is why this forbidden desire remains latent in the unconscious, and makes compulsions have to be repeated all the time.

Compulsions according to the cognitive-behavioral paradigm

According to this current of psychology, there is no conscious entity that tries to suppress contents stored in another unconscious entity, so the definition of compulsion renounces these concepts. Thus, from this point of view a compulsion is a behavior (such as pulling one's hair or washing one's hands) or a mental act (such as mentally repeating a word) that repetitive ritual without necessarily leading to a clear purpose of which the person is aware. of which the person is aware.

Over time, compulsions can become so frequently repeated that they significantly impair the person's quality of life by preventing him or her from carrying out normal day-to-day plans and tasks.

Causes

As we have seen, the definition of what a compulsion is changes significantly depending on which stream we pay attention to. From current psychology, however, it is considered that the psychoanalytic concept of compulsion is not useful, since it does not allow to submit hypotheses to experimentation; that is why the latter is the dominant one.

According to the concept of compulsion used by the cognitive-behavioral current, the cause of this phenomenon is due to a maladaptative association. That is, compulsions are the result of a learning process that tries to respond to a feeling of discomfort that occurs regularly and that is just as bad or worse than what it wants to fight, since it is repeated all the time and makes the person not feel good if he/she does not perform a series of very specific and rigid steps.

The role of obsessions

It is considered that that unpleasant stimulus that makes the person perform compulsions repeatedly is something called obsession.. An obsession is an idea or a mental image (that is to say, an idea that instead of being able to be communicated with words is rather visual) that is unbearable or overly intrusive..

For example, you may think very often of a scene that causes a lot of embarrassment, or you may think of a photograph that is repulsive.

These obsessions appear without warning and without the person wanting them to, and generate discomfort. Compulsion is the improvised strategy performed to try to reduce discomfort. Unfortunately, over time the compulsion becomes as uncontrollable and unpredictable as the obsession, with the time the compulsion becomes as uncontrollable and unpredictable as the obsessionbecause, as it has been repeated, it has become totally associated with it. This mechanism is the foundation of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

• You can read more about Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in this article, "Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): what is it and how does it manifest?"

Symptoms in cases of compulsion

These are some of the most frequent symptoms related to compulsions and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It should be noted that if there is no feeling of inability to control these actions and if there is no perceived worsening of the quality of life due to them, it is hasty to consider that compulsions are present. In any case, the diagnosis should be made by clinical psychologists or other professionals specialized in such practices within the health system.

• Frequent ritual of hand washing
• Need to to have a certain area of the house very well organizedwith perfectly aligned objects, symmetrical arrangements, etc.
• Frequent ritual of washing an object always following the same steps in the same order
• Need to to check several times whether a door has been locked
• Need to check many times if the gas tap has been turned off