The Electroencephalogram, Obsessional Illness and Obsessional Personality

Abstract

A clinical relationship between obsessional illness and epilepsy is unusual, but the few electroencephalographic (EEG) investigations of obsessional patients which have been published claim a high incidence of abnormal electrical activity. Records of twenty-six neurotic and five schizophrenic patients, all with obsessional symptoms, were examined by Pacellaet al.(13), who found twenty-two of the thirty-one EEGs to be abnormal. Fourteen showed definite convulsive patterns with frequent 2–4 c.p.s. activity and increased high voltage waves after overbreathing. Rockwell and Simons (14) found only two abnormal records in eleven uncomplicated obsessional neurotics, using Gibb's criteria of normality, but of ten patients classified as psychopathic personalities with obsessional symptoms, all had abnormal EEGs although two were borderline. Their definition of psychopathic personality is not made explicit and the clinical distinction between their two groups is unclear. Jarvie (4) reports a case in which slow activity on hyperventilation in the EEG was associated with phobias and obsessional impulses preceded by a two-year history of episodes of rage.