[A contribution to the psychopathology of obsessive-compulsive disorder]

[The psychopathology of "as if" experiences]

After a descriptive phenomenological sketch, we try to elucidate the structure of the "as if" experience. This experience is concerned with appearance, with what 'seems' to a person as opposed to actual reality. Normally there is always the possibility of error trying to recognize reality, which is accessible to anybody. In contrast, for the individual no error is possible regarding an appearance which is accessible to nobody but the person to whom it appears. In daily life we are often unaware of the confusions of reality and appearance. The obsessive patient cannot permit himself such customary confusions. The delusional patient cannot realize relevant confusions of reality and appearance, in spite of encounters with outside persons. As mentioned, reality and appearance get pathologically entangled in both obsessive and delusional patients. Some therapeutic proposals are offered from the standpoint of these "as if" patents.

[The psychopathology of depersonalization]

In his classic overview, Mayer-Gross indicated two clinical features of depersonalization to be taken as starting points for future investigation: excessive difficulty in describing it and its relatively rare appearance in organic disorders. Neither characteristic has so far been discussed sufficiently in psychopathology and neurobiology. In this article, we examine the language aspect of depersonalization by comparisons with aphasia, in which the two objects of study described by Mayer-Gross, speech and organic disorders, intertwine. Concerning amnestic aphasia, Gelb and Goldstein insist that an object cannot be grasped as a generally understood fact using a categorical attitude but only experienced subjectively in its this-ness with a concrete attitude. The particular experience of depersonalization is the reverse of that in amnestic aphasia, as the relation of the depersonalized patient to this-ness is disturbed but an ideal view of the generality remains.