OBSESSIVE COMPULSIVE NEUROSIS IN NORTH-WEST INDIA: A phenomenological study*

Seventy two patients fulfilling Research Diagnostic Criteria for obsessional illness were studied in detail from a phenomenological point of view. Frequency of various forms and contents of obsessions and compulsions were delineated. The forms of obsessions seen were; doubts (65%); thinking (52.7 %); fear (47.2%); magical thinking (36.1%); impulse (4.1%); image (4.1 %) and others (5.5%). In compulsions, yielding compulsions were most common being present in 59.7% of the cases. Analysis of the content of the obsessions revealed that dirt and contamination was the commonest content (48.3%).