WHAT ARE THE TYPICAL PSYCHOLOGICAL/EMOTIONAL SYMPTOMS OF THIS DISORDER':
             According to Eric Hollander, the American Psychiatric Association
             classifies Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) as an anxiety disorder
             because obsessions and attempts to resist compulsions are often linked with
             anxiety, the performance of compulsive acts often relieves anxiety and
             because other anxiety disorders, such as phobias, often occur along with
             OCD (1993). This categorization, however, is rather controversial, for some
             therapists argue that the fear and anxiety that persons with OCD experience
             are of a different nature than those that occur in phobias or generalized
             anxiety disorder. Moreover, giving in to a compulsion does not necessarily
             More than ninety percent of those with OCD have both obsessions and
             compulsions, although some are troubled more by one than by the other.
             Obsessions are intrusive, irrational ideas that repeatedly well up in a
             person's mind and they can take different forms, ranging from
             thoughts associated with household problems to even images of doing bodily
             harm to another person. The person affected with OCD usually knows that
             such obsessions are irrational and knows that they will not act upon them.
             Yet they cannot force these ideas away and may try to suppress or
             neutralize them by doing other irrational acts that are not as harmful.
             These persons are not only distressed by such ideas but also feel that they
             are "bad persons because they have thoughts like these, even though they
             are not to blame for them in any way" (Hollander, 1993).
             Once thought to be relatively rare, OCD is actually more common than
             many better-known psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia and anorexia
             nervosa. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), in
             the course of a lifetime, two to three percent of the population develop
             OCD and as many as four million America...