[Explicative psychopathology in obsessive-compulsive disorder: a postrationalist viewpoint]

While descriptive psychopathology of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is now well-established, there is still a lack of a satisfying model of explicative psychopathology that explains the mechanisms that generate obsessive phenomenology. The main attempts to delineate such a model are based on cognitive therapy: according to this approach OCD is a consequence of dysfunctional beliefs (i.e. overestimation of the risk or of the influence of one's own mind on the reality). On the contrary, according to postrationalist cognitive approach, OCD would be based on a characteristic personality structure, which could be identified not only in patients with OCD but also in those who will never develop symptoms. In symptomatic individuals this organization ("Obsessive" Personal Meaning Organization) is more rigidly structured. In particular, there is crystallization of so-called diachronic attitude, which is the key to explain most of the symptoms.