THE OVERLAP BE1i\'EEN DISSOCIATIVE AJ~D OBSESSIVE.. COMPULSIVE DISORDERS: ATHEORETICAL LINK

The psychological literature reveals a comorbidity between dissociative and obsessive-compulsive disorders. The exact nature ofthis relationship, however, remains unknown (Steinberg, 1993). This paper offers one explanation by linking the manifestation of dissociative and obsessive-compulsive symptoms to rigidity in the spontaneous organiwtion and integration of cognitive/perceptual experience. While the authors acknowledge there are most likely otherfactors contributing to this complex relationship, they believe that the dissociative and obsessive's inability to attend to newfacts, respond to changes in the environment, and assimilate/accommodate peripheral information into pre-existing schemas about the selfand the world may begin to explain some oftheir clinical overlap in perception, cognition, and behavior. For over half a century, researchers and theorists have speculated about the relationship between dissociative and obsessive-eompulsive disorders (Davison, 1964; Shorvon, 1946; Steinberg, 1993; Torch, 1978). However, despite a growing body ofresearch linking the two (Bartlett & Drummond, 1990; Beere, 1996; Goff, Olin,Jenike, Baer, & Buttolph, 1992; K1uft, 1993; Ross & Anderson, 1988), little has been written to explain their clinical comorbidity. As a result, the following questions remain unanswered: Why do dissociative individuals tend to exhibit obsessive-compulsive symptoms? Why do some patients diagnosed with obsessive-eompulsive dis38 order tend to display elevated levels ofdissociativity? The following theoretical investigation of the psychological literature attempts to answer these complex and long-standing questions. Although there are demonstrated biological aspects of OeD, initially hypothesized by Insel, Mueller, Alterman, Linnoila, & Murphy (1985), associated with the response of symptoms to serotonin reuptake inhibitors, biological considerations are not pertinent to the current discus ion since dissociative psychopathology is non-biological, being strongly linked to an environmental history of trauma. Waller & Ross (1997), for example, using taxometric methods, demonstrated that pathological dissociativity is not genetic but environmental. The thesis of this paper is that the comorbidity between dissociative and obsessive-eompulsive disorders can be linked to rigidity in the organization and integration of cognitive/perceptual experience. A review of the psychological literature reveals that dissociative and obsessive-compulsive individuals have trouble attending to new facts, responding to changes in the environment, and assimilating/accommodating peripheral information into pre-existing schemas about the self and the world. Relative to the available literature, the authors focus on a selected area of research, namely the cognitive and perceptual processing of dissociative and obsessive-compulsive individuals. This research, however, taps only one of a myriad of theoretical perspectives on dissociative and obsessivecompulsive disorders. The authors, therefore, acknowledge that their thesis may not fully explain the relationship between dissociative and obsessive-eompulsive disorders and that there are most likely other factors contributing to this complex relationship. This, however, is not to diminish the importance of this thesis. In breaking new ground, this paper is the first to examine the "exact nature" (Steinberg, 1993) of the relationship between dissociative and obsessive-eompulsive disorders. Despite some limitations, it raises several theoretical considerations and numerous directions for