What Is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Find a therapist to treat OCD

Charlie, one of the protagonists in "The Drama," suffers with debilitating fixations.

He yearns for purity and perfect insight, attempting to avoid the source of his anxiety without them.

Addressing obsessive-compulsive tendencies requires faith and humility, accepting we'll never know everything.

This may surprise you: Faith is a significant part of treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), as well as humility. When we think of faith, we often think of religion, superstition, or even blind faith. We think of faith as a means of survival, a practical way to motivate ourselves to eat, sleep, and engage in life’s difficulties. Maybe somewhat shockingly, just continuing to live is a struggle for many. This is especially true for those diagnosed with OCD.

OCD latches onto facts and extends them, logically stretching them to the farthest end of human suffering. In a nutshell, OCD brings potential suffering into the present; it breathes life into it in the way people believe God breathes life into each soul. And it makes something out of nothing, at least nothing so meaningful. The new film, The Drama, showcases obsessive tendencies in a way seldom seen on screen; we usually get depictions of people who can’t stop cleaning. The film asks: How well do we know anyone? And, more importantly: Can we live with epistemological gaps in our relationships? Or, how well should we expect to know them?

The film highlights the relationship of Emma and Charlie, who are on the verge of being wed. Without spoiling the film, at a dinner between them and their best man and maid of honor, respectively, Emma reveals a secret about her past. The others, stunned, grill her about her history, potential trauma, and reasoning as a teenager. Unsatisfied, for it seems much of it feels meaningless, with no major lesson or deeper understanding, they abruptly end dinner. And Charlie, to use Emma’s term, begins to fixate. For days on end, he relentlessly grills her. He returns to her history, her mindset, and, again, attempts to locate a trauma to explain her decisions. As the film progresses, Emma attempts to explain, as well as she could, what her thoughts could have been. But it all feels, again, unsatisfactory. We get the sense that she understands herself as well as Charlie does. It all feels so random or at least heavily context-dependent.

And, so, the paranoia begins. Failing to discover a root cause or understand her choices in some broader context, with a neat backstory explaining them and subsequent wisdom implying personal growth, Charlie begins to see danger in each corner of their home, even disposing of a harmless, everyday item, for fear of it triggering Emma. Charlie is consumed by his fears, which taint his memories of their relationship and preclude him from forming new ones. In a later scene, Charlie resorts to a common defense in OCD—to escape his anxiety, he engages in self-sabotage. While Emma’s decisions are disconcerting, it’s equally true that Charlie seeks out a comfortable, almost utopian, marriage. It’s as though he’s Adam in the Garden of Eden, discovering his mortality. Throughout the film, Charlie perceives Emma as an almost childlike figure (reinforcing that perspective, both seem to be each other’s first loves), who helps him escape the burdens and seriousness of the world. He needs her to remain pure. And, when that’s no longer feasible, he tries to control the narrative, even lying to her maid of honor about Emma’s childhood trauma. He so desperately wants her behavior to be excusable.

This encapsulates OCD’s relationship with knowledge—to feel safe, it should either be avoided or controlled; knowledge is only considered in light of its relationship with one’s sense of comfort. There’s no love of knowledge or wisdom; Charlie is as distinct from Socrates as one can imagine. So, the audience is left wondering: Does he or can he really love her? Deeper, does someone in the midst of an obsessive episode have the ability to really love another, as doing so is premised on seeing them? Control or avoid. Hence, the attempted self-sabotage when control is lost. With that, Emma is stuck playing the role of fixer, feverishly attempting to answer all of his questions while reassuring him that, while she can’t exactly say why, she’s a better, or at least different, person. But, she just stokes the flames of fixation—the more you give it, the more it requires. Charlie craves more, which, inevitably, results in rage. His decision to self-sabotage isn’t just an attempt to escape a possible marriage; it’s also pushing back against the universe and even her. How dare Emma be someone other than whom he envisioned? And how dare life do this to him, send him her?

Charlie is the epitome of those of us who struggle with OCD. His character exhibits how rational it can appear; I’m sure some in the audience even agreed with him based on this new set of data. Wouldn’t any of us respond similarly? I’ll leave that to you to decide. I will say, however, if Charlie decided to make it work, and I won’t say if he did, he would have had to engage with all of the paradoxical evidence, a mixture of who Emma was both past and present, and decide to move forward with faith. He would have had to carry the burden of potentially being mistaken, of grossly misjudging her. He would even have had to accept her as others clearly couldn’t. He would have had to believe that he loved her enough. And that love would have had to maybe not override but at least live side by side with his need for purity; it would have needed to keep that need in check, as well as vice-versa.

The Drama teaches us that simple etiologies, foundational causes of mental illness, don’t exist. And, as a result, it also teaches us that people are unpredictable. Charlie failed to grasp, which is common with OCD, that even if you had a simple understanding of someone’s decisions, for example regarding trauma, that doesn’t automatically mean you’d know how to help them. Arguably, Emma didn’t need any help. And while she didn’t understand how, she seemed to somehow move on while Charlie couldn’t. Emma symbolized the chaos underlying his well-organized life. And this left us with the question: Has love eluded Charlie or has he eluded it? I’m sure we can apply it to our own lives, too.

What Is Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder?

Find a therapist to treat OCD

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