Pathological Rituals - Anxiety And OCD

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Pathological rituals are abnormal rituals which are found in psychological disorders such as anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). This book tries to answer two questions: First, why ritual scientists have failed to consider these rituals in detail. Second, why such rituals have rich repertoire of general ritual structures or GRS.

JAYANT BURDE received his M.Sc. degree in mathematics from Bombay University and a degree in law from Bangalore University. He is a Certificated Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers. He has written many articles and papers in such areas as finance, organizational structure, philosophy of science and religion.

Pathological Rituals are abnormal rituals such as are found in anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). There is a sizable literature in this area which is found in abnormal psychology and psychiatry, but ritual scientists seem to have ignored pathological rituals. What is intriguing is that this pathology especially OCD displays various characteristic ritual types found in general ritual structures or GRS in abundance.

In order to understand ritual pathology at three levels, emotional, psychological and cerebral the book attempts to discuss this aspect in the light of recent advances in brain imagery and pharmacology. The concept of ritual instinct is pivotal to this discussion.

Ritual analysts employ two methods to describe rituals. The first relates to semantic concerned with semantics; the investigator tries to understand the meaning of the ritual. This may involve weighing oral traditions and various scholary commentaries. However, when the ritual is old it may be distorted due to passage of time. This leads to multiple interpretation of ritual. There is another opproach to ritual which has gained currieney during the last few decades. Scholars such as Staal examine the syntax or grammer of the ritual which provides a different dimension to investigation. Syntactic analysis may provide structural patterns which could shed light on history and culture. It is well-known that syntax using comparative analysis of rituals may afford insights that cannot be gained through semantic techniques.

It can be shown that rituals display some 10-12 patterns in different proportions depending on the ritual type. What is amazing is that verse, music, gymnastics, and sports share similar patterns along with rituals. They have been called General Ritual Structures (GRS) in this book.

While rituals have been discussed by several authors, they seemed to have paid minimal attention to pathological rituals. Pathological rituals afford unique genere qua ritual. Of all rituals such as anxiety, OCD and Fourette syndrome. OCD has the richest ritual patterns in quantitative as well as qualitative terms. We may not reach a solution to this conundrum but we may indicate the direction which the furhter researches will move to come closer to the answer.