Case Study Of Clark's Ocd

Clark, now currently 30 years old, has been a worrisome and anxious individual ever since he could remember. At the age of 12, it became harder for him to stop worrying and he struggled to distract himself. Due to his obsessive worries, he would often apologize to his mother for unnecessary things. Fearing that if he did not apologize or receive some kind of reassurance he felt that something bad might happen or it would have meant that something was wrong with him. At about this same age, Clark started to wash his hands frequently. He would wash anytime he would touch a doorknob, a light switch, or anything that he felt was dirty or contaminated. Sometimes he washed until his hands were raw. His mother saw this and started calling her friends and her sister about this issue, but did not talk to Clark directly. Instead she made indirect jokes to other family members and called her son out at times when she would see this unusual

There are psychodynamic therapists that would say that Clark’s id impulses take the form of obsessive thoughts, thus having the ego defenses take on the form of compulsive actions. (Comer, 2013) This is explained by the id operating by the pleasure principle and also being responsible for primary processes early in childhood such as illogical, irrational and fantasy thinking. And the ego, is a more advanced form of the id that also seeks pleasure but wants to avoid pain. Therefore, if there is conflict between the two, then to a psychodynamic theorist perceptive, this could have resulted in Clark’s OCD due to the unconscious conflict that he might be trying to suppress. (Kelly, 2016) Due to this distressing manner, Clark indirectly transferred the conflict into