Obsessive compulsive disorder, checking, and non-verbal memory: a neuropsychological investigation.

There is considerable evidence in the literature for the presence of non-verbal and praxic memory deficits in OCD. Such deficits may represent the cognitive substrate of doubt-related phenomenon such as checking. Neuropsychological tests of non-verbal memory functioning and memory for actions were administered to patients with OCD (whose predominant symptom was checking) and a group of matched healthy controls.

The neuropsychology of obsessive-compulsive disorder: a review and consideration of clinical implications.

Clinicians have suspected that obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is associated with fundamental information-processing deficits beyond those attributable to mood disturbance alone. Neuropsychological investigations can be divided into four broad areas concerned with general intellectual functioning, an 'under-inclusive' thinking style, performance on tests sensitive to frontal lobe impairment and performance on tests of memory. This body of research is critically reviewed.

Investigation into the relationship between personality traits and OCD: a replication employing a clinical population.

The relationship between obsessional personality traits and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) has long been the subject of debate. Although clinicians have asserted for nearly a hundred years that such a relationship exists, empirical investigations have failed to provide consistent support; however, none of these empirical investigations have undertaken analyses that control for the effect of mood variables. Employing a non-clinical sample, Rosen and Tallis (1995) [Behaviour, Research and Therapy, 4, 445-450] found that when mood variables are taken into account, a unique relationship between obsessional traits and obsessional symptoms emerges.

Compulsive washing in the absence of phobic and illness anxiety.

A new typology of washing compulsions has been proposed: those that arise from a sense of dirtiness, those that arise from a sense of mental pollution, and finally, those that arise from a fear of illness. A case series is reported suggesting that a further class of washing behaviour can be described attributable to the personality trait of perfectionism.

Psychiatry is more than a science.

Some loosely framed hypotheses may be stated. (a) Psychiatry depends on science and considerably more besides. (b) Consideration of the clinical methods of psychiatry enables us to characterise six axioms of fundamental importance to the subject which are primary features of human experience, not derived from any theory, ethically neutral and in principle independent of culture.

Kallmann's syndrome and mental handicap.

A case of Kallmann's syndrome is reported in a 62-year-old mentally handicapped man with clinical and laboratory characteristics of the syndrome. The literature is reviewed and the possible associations with mental handicap explored.