[Compulsion in neurosis, psychosis and psychosomatic disease]

Obsessive-compulsive phenomena are ubiquitous. Therefore onesided nosological categorization, e.g. viewing obsessive compulsive phenomena as variants of psychosis, seems inappropriate. After discussing these problems of definition, the clinical presentation and relative importance of obsessive-compulsive phenomena in neurosis, psychosis and psychosomatic disorders will be investigated. It will be shown, that the respective obsessive-compulsive syndromes share in common an auto-protective "function", i.e. obsessive-compulsive phenomena can be regarded as a counterregulative attempt of the individual to stabilize unstable structures. That the obsessive-compulsive phenomena tend themselves to have a highly pathological quality, is the reverse of this coping behavior.