Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Such a pattern is typical of OCD, as sufferers are often able to conceal the rituals they feel compelled to practice from even their closest family members until trauma bring them out into the open. For Lady Macbeth, ultimate relief comes only in death; suicidal depression often accompanies OCD. However, had she been examined by a 20th century psychiatrist instead of her 11th century physician, her prognosis might have been much less grim. Modern therapies, including drug treatments and psychoanalysis, promise help for the chronic hand washers of today. Lady Mac

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her husband to carry out the deed. Rapoport (1989) notes, "Unless a symptom interferes with a person's life by impairing function or causing distress, we can't say the person is sick" (p. 15). Though she may have been provably neurotic before the murder, Lady Macbeth was quite able to function and not in any obvious distress. Only the trauma of confronting the corpse she contrived to murder pushes her over the edge. Levenkron (1991) observes, "OCD symptoms often await a trauma before emerging" (p. 40). Although she appears to be unmoved by Duncan's murder, killing a king while he sleeps under her own roof must be a disturbing event to orchestrate. Howard Felperin (1987) writes, "Her eventual madness is the index of the very humanity she would negate" (p. 102). For many OCD sufferers, their disorder is an attempt to regulate life and to deny the messiness of being human. Lady Macbeth tries to rise above being a frail human being; the effort drives her mind into illness. Shakespeare, who knew nothing of the clinical diagnosis of obsessive-compulsive disorder, chose Lady Macbeth's hand washing in part for the same reason that it is the best known example of an OCD symptom, because it is so obvious a psychological expressi
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Approximate Word count = 4035
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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