obsessive/compulsive

An essay on OCD splits its author between past and future, fiction and reality.

I follow the path of the gods through the wood
My eyes take every twisting turn of the grain
But my body moves straight along the planking
So those who watch me see that the path of the gods is straight
While I dwell in a world with no straightness in it.

—‘The God Whispers of Han Qing-jao’
from Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card.

INTRODUCTION

‘We, the godspoken, don’t have to wait and wonder about the mandate of heaven, as others do,’ declares Han Fei-tzu in Orson Scott Card’s science fiction masterwork, Xenocide. Denizen of a world in which OCD is a seen as a blessing, not a curse, a gift from the gods who speak through its obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviours, Fei-tzu’s rapturous acceptance of his condition starkly contrasts with the horror articulated by an anonymous woman in our own world, relentlesssly tormented by thoughts of injuring her family.

‘I would work hard to reason with myself, assure myself, and pray to my Heavenly Father for forgiveness and healing,’ she write…