Conjured Activism

conquering the world one oxymoron at a time

OCD

October 24, 2006 at 8:42 am · Filed under random

The older I get, the more OCD I become, but all in all, it’s not exactly a disorder because I function perfectly normally, and my OCD-esque behaviors don’t affect my everyday life very much. For example, I can’t stand my hands being the least bit unclean or sticky or covered with flour, for example, when I’m cooking. But I don’t kill myself over it; I just wash my hands a lot when I can, but I can still eat even with dirty unwashed hands. Being in China for the past few days, however, has made me wonder if OCD is a made-up disorder that only exists in a culture like America where people are obsessed with cleanliness.

For example, the bathrooms here are nasty. I hold my breath in most bathrooms, and I roll up the legs of my jeans to my knees, just in case, to prevent them from ever touching the floors. How would someone with actual OCD ever survive in Chinese society? They’d drive themselves crazy and then dead with all the nastiness around. Are there people with OCD in China?

This got me thinking: I know OCD-ness is a mental thing, but is it also largely a product of our environment? As in, can only someone who grows up in a generally spotless clean place develop OCD? Someone who grows up in China sees nothing wrong with a certain level of dirtiness because they are in contact with it everyday from the day they were born; thus there may be no such thing as obsessing over cleanliness. Does this mean that OCD-ness really is all in our heads? How do we get to be OCD in the first place? Is OCD behavior something only unique to western, developed culture?

How does it work? I dunno.

**ADD**: What a coincidence. Right after I wrote this last night, I went to watch TV, and somebody in the show said that they were OCD. The Chinese term is 洁壁 (the 2nd character’s not right, but I can’t find the right one to input). I heard the person say it, and thought “no way she’s talking about OCD.” So I asked my uncle what that meant, and he said it means someone who’s overly clean and used the example that someone with that condition would need to wipe the handle of a mug repeatedly before picking it up just to make sure it’s clean. So I guess OCD does exist in China.

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4 Comments »

thallreader wrote @ October 24th, 2006 at 1:19 pm

I think it’s the opposite. Well, first we must distinguish between home and public settings. In China, many people keep their homes spotless — wiping floors every day, sweeping away every dust particle, changing clothes and obviously shoes when they get home, washing hands every time they touch money and definitely before ingesting anything, etc., but that’s out of necessity or a perception of such necessity. As you said, it is dirty outside the home: if you aren’t careful you will get sick. That would seem compulsive to Americans, no? If someone grew up in a clean(er) place such as America, then not always washing hands before a meal, sitting on the street curb, putting backpacks on the ground, not changing shoes, have less significant consequences.

More than where you grew up, it is how you grew up. Maybe you got it from your early life and your parents, who did grow up in China. So I vote for “shaped by environment.”

But psychological disorders are made up anyway, haha… I believe there is a standard manual for psychological diagnosis (DSM something or another) compiled by committee and upgraded like software. I think they are working on version 5. There were some hilarious categories of psychological disorders in earlier versions. Has it gotten better, as in more scientific and reliable? I have no idea.

thallreader wrote @ October 25th, 2006 at 8:47 am

The word is 洁癖. 癖 pi3, addction.

shan wrote @ October 26th, 2006 at 8:18 am

ahhh, no wonder i couldn’t find it in the pinyin input

matt wrote @ August 3rd, 2007 at 11:12 am

I think you misunderstand the nature of OCD - although a common ‘topic’ for OCD may be cleanliness, the variety of obsessions and compulsions is mind boggling (and distressing for those of us with more severe forms of it!) Having said that, I think that the ‘topics’ that occur within the disorder are undoubtedly influenced by culture…though cleanliness is perhaps one of the most universal of human preoccupations.