ost well documented and is related to other kinds of washing, such as compulsive showering or housecleaning. While he may not be a classic OCD sufferer, Felix Unger in Neil Simon's The Odd Couple certainly exhibits some of this kind of compulsive need to clean endlessly. Gail Steketee and Kerrin White (199) observe, "In OCD, rituals are usually driven by anxiety, not pleasure or gain, and the ritualizer has a sense that the ritual is irrational and makes efforts to fight it" (p. 31). Felix does seem to derive some pleasure from his compulsion; nevertheless, there is also a degree of panic to his actions.
Leon Salzman (1980) makes the distinction between OCD's two components: "The obsession is a persistent, ritualized thought pattern, whereas the compulsion is a persistent, ritualized behavior pattern" (p. 10). As Steven Levenkron (1991) describes them, compulsions are "repeated activities, or rituals, [which] are actually self-soothing devices used to fill an emotional emptiness" (p. 2). This "repetition brings familiarity, and familiarity is the
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