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Psychological explanations of OCD : Behavioural Theory aka Learning Theory
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Psychological Explanations of OCD
Behavioural theory, also known as learning.
Work Cited
http://www.brownalumnimagazine.com/content/view/1269/40/
Meyer & Cheeser (1970) – Compulsions are learnt responses which are ways of reducing the anxiety brought on by the obsession.
http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml
Superstition Hypothesis (Skinner, 1948) – Found that people who develop OCD’s make by chance associations between behaviours and reinforces. This leads them to repeat the behaviours.
Deep Brain Stimulation
outline of the explanation
The behavioural theory suggests that people with OCD associate certain objects or situations with fear, and that they learn to avoid the things they fear or to perform rituals that help reduce the fear. It is an extreme form of extreme form of ‘learned avoidance’ behaviour.
Evaluation
It does not adequately explain why some compulsions persist even when they produce, rather than reduce, anxiety.
This pattern of fear and avoidance/ritual may begin when people are under periods of high emotional stress, such as starting a new job or ending a relationship.
therapies
An OCD patient will use strategies to reduce the negative thought, but the effort they put in to trying to inhibit the thoughts ends up inducing a preoccupation with it.
Once a connection between an object and the feeling of fear becomes established, people with OCD avoid the things they fear, rather than confront or tolerate the fear.
Exposure and response prevention—helps you gradually confront the feared object or obsession without giving in to the compulsive ritual linked to it
Because these actions temporarily reduce the level of fear, the fear is never challenged and dealt with and the behaviour is reinforced.
Symptoms of OCD e.g. avoidance behaviour themselves create anxiety; is hard to argue that people learn these responses in order to reduce their fear
Aversion therapy—use of painful stimulus to prevent OCD behavior
Flooding—intense exposure to object that causes OCD behavior
Implosion therapy—repeated exposure to object that causes fear