Compulsive Behavior - Cultural Examples

Cultural Examples

  • Lady Macbeth was obliged by her guilt feelings to repetitively wash her hands.
  • Samuel Johnson was compelled to obsessively count steps and stairs.
  • Len Deighton in his brainwashing thriller The IPCRESS File noted the relative immunity to it of compulsive checkers: "people who go back twice to make sure the door is locked, who walk down the street avoiding the joins in the paving, then become sure they've left the kettle on. They are difficult to hypnotize and difficult to brain-wash".

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