A hierarchical narrative framework for OCD

Abstract

This paper gives an explanatory framework for obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) based on a generative model of cognition. The framework is constructed using the new concept of a 'formal narrative' which is a sequence of cognitive states inferred from sense data. First we propose that human cognition uses a hierarchy of narratives to predict changes in the natural and social environment. Each layer in the hierarchy represents a distinct 'view of the world', but it also contributes to a global unitary perspective. Second, the generative models used for cognitive inference can create new narratives from those states already experienced by an individual. We hypothesise that when a threat is recognised, narratives are generated as a cognitive model of possible threat scenarios. Using this framework, we suggest that OCD arises from a dysfunction in sub-surface levels of inference while the global unitary perspective remains intact. The failure of inference is felt as the external world being 'not just right', and its automatic correction by the perceptual system is experienced as compulsion. Ordering and symmetry obsessions are the effects of the perceptual system trying to achieve precise inference. Checking behaviour arises because the security system attempts to finesse inference as part of its protection behaviour. Similarly, fear of harm and distressing thoughts occur because the failure of inference results in an indistinct view of the past or the future. A wide variety of symptoms in OCD is thus explained by a single dysfunction.