Thank you for this analysis, I really like the connections it makes with morality related processes, though of we accept that disgust is a very basic emotion that's only secondarily about moral purity, the contamination subtype might be separate from morality? As in many humans with contamination focused OCD might not subscribe to purity ethics either personally or culturally.
It also reinforces my belief that intrusive thoughts themselves OCD don't make, but there still probably is a connection.
I've always wondered about one thing though, re notions of elevated responsibility. That for some people the idea that the world is dangerous, unpredictably and randomly so, is so unbearable and distressing (not consciously even, but in some emotional layer) that their minds create what I'd call provisionally an "emotional delusion of control" (emotional because acute awareness* of the irrationality / dysfunction is a feature of OCD) because painful as that is in effect, it's preferable to accepting that we can't save anyone, ever.
* that said, in my interactions with people with OCD (wether clinical or subclinical or just hinted at), it's very very rare to find people who don't "buy" into some mild version of their "irrational" loops: whether their emotional process influences values ("I am scared of infection so I think people with coughs going to work are evil bastards") or their values get monstrously/disastrously magnified into the process ("I think CSA is the most evil thing ever, and that's why my OCD manifests as intrusive thoughts of my harming children") is hard to determine.
Thank you for this analysis, I really like the connections it makes with morality related processes, though of we accept that disgust is a very basic emotion that's only secondarily about moral purity, the contamination subtype might be separate from morality? As in many humans with contamination focused OCD might not subscribe to purity ethics either personally or culturally.
It also reinforces my belief that intrusive thoughts themselves OCD don't make, but there still probably is a connection.
I've always wondered about one thing though, re notions of elevated responsibility. That for some people the idea that the world is dangerous, unpredictably and randomly so, is so unbearable and distressing (not consciously even, but in some emotional layer) that their minds create what I'd call provisionally an "emotional delusion of control" (emotional because acute awareness* of the irrationality / dysfunction is a feature of OCD) because painful as that is in effect, it's preferable to accepting that we can't save anyone, ever.
* that said, in my interactions with people with OCD (wether clinical or subclinical or just hinted at), it's very very rare to find people who don't "buy" into some mild version of their "irrational" loops: whether their emotional process influences values ("I am scared of infection so I think people with coughs going to work are evil bastards") or their values get monstrously/disastrously magnified into the process ("I think CSA is the most evil thing ever, and that's why my OCD manifests as intrusive thoughts of my harming children") is hard to determine.