Here’s a question that supposedly measures how twisted you are (though, actually, I made it up):
One day, Old Wang happened to read a novel by a writer and was blown away. He blurted out, “It would be great if this writer died!”
Question: Why would Old Wang want the writer he loves to die?
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The answer is: so Old Wang could buy the writer’s complete works!
Only if the writer dies and stops writing new novels can Old Wang’s compulsive desire to collect a complete set of the writer’s works be satisfied.
If you didn’t guess this twisted answer, congratulations: you’re not an extreme case of OCD like Old Wang.
In the book Who Am I: The 16 Basic Desires That Motivate Our Actions and Define Our Personalities, psychologist Steven Reiss points out that what we call “OCD” actually comes in two kinds, each driven by a different basic desire.
The first kind of OCD is driven by the desire for “order.” “This desire comes from cleansing rituals found in many species—for example, cats and dogs both lick themselves clean. These cleansing rituals can prevent disease, so their survival value is obvious. For humans, order includes the pleasure brought by rituals and traditions; order makes people feel stable and in control. A lack of order means chaos, unpredictability, and change, which often leaves people feeling unsettled.”
People with OCD who are extremely fixated on cleanliness (they can’t get their hands clean enough) or ritualistic actions (their behavior is extremely rigid) belong to this category.
The other kind of OCD is driven by the desire to “collect.” “Collecting is the desire to hoard. Its biological source is animals’ instinct to store food and other necessities for survival. For humans, this desire shows up in the pleasure of saving money and collecting things.” Compulsive behavior involving extreme devotion to saving money or hoarding belongs to this category.
Which kind of OCD does Old Wang have?
At first glance, it seems to be the second kind—Old Wang has a powerful hoarding impulse. But if we think about it carefully, we realize that what really bothers Old Wang is “completeness”—a form of order. If he has just bought a complete set of a writer’s works and the writer then publishes a new book, how horribly untidy would that extra book on the shelf look!
At this point, I looked up at my own bookshelf and wondered: when will the six and seven volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire finally arrive to join the set of volumes 1–5? I’ve been agonizing over this for ten years already…
Note
- This series of “Psychology in a Nutshell” articles was written at the time as popular-science commentary related to Zhichao Wei: Psychology in a Nutshell. They were short essays published on the now-closed platform Fatuan, and the original link no longer exists.
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