This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citation map  • Citing articles on HighWire  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Review and Commentary

Roger K. Pitman, MD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1987;44(3):226-232.

Abstract
• Pierre Janet's classic contribution to the understanding of obsessive-compulsive disorder, Obsessions and Psychasthenia (1903), remains untranslated as well as unappreciated by American psychiatry, despite increasing recognition of the importance of this mental health problem. Herein the work is summarized and discussed. Although it tends to be remembered for its theoretical ideas, most of which have become dated, the most valuable aspect of Obsessions and Psychasthenia is its clinical discoveries. These include the important role played in the disorder by symptoms that are closely related to, but yet cannot properly be called, obsessions and compulsions (the "forced agitations"); the underlying psychasthenic mental state; and the obsessive-compulsive person's specific failure to adapt to reality. Despite the passage of nearly a century, these observations, and Janet's suggestions regarding treatment, are as timely now as when they were made.

Author Affiliations
From the Veterans Administration Medical Center, Manchester, NH, and the Department of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Medical School, Hanover, NH.

Footnotes
Accepted for publication Oct 28, 1986.

Reprint requests to Research Service (151), Veterans Administration Medical Center, 718 Smyth Rd, Manchester, NH 03104 (Dr Pitman).

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?

THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES

Child Psychoanalysis and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms: The Treatment of a Ten-Year-Old Boy
McGehee
J Am Psychoanal Assoc 2005;53:213-237.
ABSTRACT  

Personality disorders and normal personality dimensions in obsessive--compulsive disorder
SAMUELS et al.
Br. J. Psychiatry 2000;177:457-462.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Late-Onset Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: A Case Series
Weiss and Jenike
J. Neuropsychiatry Clin. Neurosi. 2000;12:265-268.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Use of Factor-Analyzed Symptom Dimensions to Predict Outcome With Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors and Placebo in the Treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Mataix-Cols et al.
Am. J. Psychiatry 1999;156:1409-1416.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT