Unit 4 Section 3Exercise 9 Anxiety Obessive-compulsive disorder OCD readings
“I never should have told her. The good part about being an obsessive-compulsive is that you’re always on time for work. The bad part is that you’re on time for everything. Rinsing your coffee cup, taking a bath, walking your clothes to the laundromat: there’s no mystery to your comings and goings, no room for spontaneity.”
Excerpt from “The Girl Next Door”
The essay, “The girl next door,” appeared in the New Yorker, in 2003. It is mostly about a nine-year-old girl who lives next to the narrator’s apartment. The girl has a somewhat vicious, neglectful mother and the girl is needy, clingy and ultimately her mother’s daughter. The narrator befriends her, but it’s a relationship gone wrong. The story is an excellent example of the uncertain border between neglect and abuse. Though our interest focuses on Brandi, the girl next door, we also learn something about the narrator. The juxtaposition of his own problematic personality with Brandi’s personal circumstances gives this narrative an extra dimension. It highlights the limitations we all have, and that the narrator as an individual has, of simply wanting to be helpful to someone.
Read the story and the brief excerpt from a real case history below:
“The Girl Next Door” by David Sedaris (2003)
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/08/18/030818fa_fact?currentPage=all
2. From “A case history”
She was a loving, talented women with whom the patient felt quite close. Relations between her and her husband became increasingly tense. After the birth of her 4th child, she began exhibiting behavior that Mr. MD perceived as bizarre and frightening. She became obsessed with the housework, especially the dishes. The children, whose chore it had been to wash and dry the dishes, were no longer permitted to do so. Now she washed them exceedingly carefully and checked them for chips. She also checked the dish towel for any speck of dirt. After she had put all the dishes away, she would take them all out again and run her hands over each one to make sure they had no cracks or chips. Not long afterwards, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized for 6 months.
Study Questions
- How does the narrator’s obsessive-compulsive disorder impact his relationship with Brandi? With his own mother?
- The narrator expresses utter shock that Brandi’s mother regards her daughter’s theft of his pencil erasers, etc… as “unbelievably petty”. What does this tell us about the value of objects and order in the obsessive-compulsive’s life?
- In the case history, what role does OCD play in the mother’s life experience?
|
