cOMMON sENSE aND fINITUDE*

Freud spoke about the childish need to repeat to ensure a constancy of object, act and mother. By repeating the child feels safe, although the act of repetition carried into adult life becomes an act of repetition for the sake of repetition, a nausea-nauseous-ad-nausea. Obsessive compulsive disorder is the act of repetition taken to its most absurd imprecation. My own experience with the devil-repetition, this stick in the eye, this discontinuity of object, act and place, has been a constant struggle to maintain a sense of safety, a safeness that in its illusion is elusive, unattainable and childish. The most indelicate feature of OCD is the self-awareness of its absurdity, the dissonance it creates in the mind, thoughts thought forward, backwards and with little regard for reason, common sense and finitude. However I suppose things could be worse, I could be limbless, headless and syphilitic, so I best count my blessings, and count and count and…