Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Reasoning Processes in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Related Disorders [Paperback]

Kieron O'Connor (Author), Frederick Aardema (Author), Marie-Claude Pélissier (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2005 | ISBN-10: 0470868775 | ISBN-13: 978-0470868775 | Edition: 1

Traditionally, obsessive-compulsive disorder has been classified as an anxiety disorder, but there is increasing evidence that it has schizotypal features ? in other words it is a belief disorder. This book describes the ways in which reasoning can be applied to OCD for effective treatment regimes. It moves comprehensively through theoretical, experimental, clinical and treatment aspects of reasoning research, and contains a detailed treatment manual of great value to practitioners, including assessment and treatment protocols and case studies

Editorial Reviews

Review

"…a readable and highly interesting book…" (The Journal of Mental Health, October 2006)

From the Back Cover

Are all obsessive disorders best considered as anxiety disorders?

People with strong obsessional doubt and fixed, overvalued obsessional beliefs are often resistant to cognitive-behaviour therapy and difficult to help. In over ten years of clinical practice with people with obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD), it became clear to Kieron O'Connor, Frederick Aardema and Marie-Claude Pélissier that current cognitive explanations of such disorders are often incomplete.

Beyond Reasonable Doubt presents an innovative approach that brings together reasoning research, philosophy of mind and language, and cognitive therapy to understand OCD. It outlines the development and validation of an inference-based approach to treating OCD, which addresses the inductive and often imaginary narrative leading to obsessional inferences.

Clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health workers will find this book of great interest. Also included is a complete treatment manual of inferential based therapy (IBA), together with an appendix of supplementary treatment cards for the client that are available online at: www.wileyeurope.com/go/oconnor.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (February 7, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470868775
• ISBN-13: 978-0470868775
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,087,022 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Proof is in the pudding: I BA and my Recovery from OCD, May 28, 2006

By 

R. Vallina "Taoman" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Reasoning Processes in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Related Disorders (Hardcover)

The recent collaboration by Kieron O'Connor, Frederick Aardema and Marie-Claude Peìlissier,Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Reasoning Processes in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Related Disorders, has inspired me to believe in the reality of Recovery from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). What the authors have developed in the text provides both inspiration and strategy for resolving the deep distress caused by OCD. I realize that Dr. Kieron O'Connor and his colleagues have developed this text primarily for the clinician, but I must say that the work sheets, exercises and training cards in Appendix 2, make the text user friendly enough for most any person with OCD to follow. I am motivated to write a review of this text for one very important reason: The authors treatment strategies have helped me to recover my composure from what truly can be a psychologically painful disorder. Their Inference Based Approach (IBA) has fulfilled my need for finding a strategy which can address my deeply entrenched obsessional doubt, which, along with the subsequent checking and repeating, has plagued my life for the past 30 years. While it was doubt which had led me to relapse again-and-again, after each of my Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) Intensives, the authors IBA model has helped me to see the doubt as the lead element within my `OCD Story' which seemed to justify the doubt. IBA did what ERP alone had failed to do; illuminate as `irrelevant' my doubt-generating `vulnerable self-theme'- my fear of punishment for making mistakes - in my imagination-based OCD story. IBA seems to work by presenting a process which FADES OUT the logical, yet out of context OCD story, while FADING IN an alternative, non-OCD story. In doing so, IBA helped me to find a way out of a very real living Hell. My new story includes ideas such as: I need not be prisoner to a 100% subjective and imaginary OCD story! I am eliminating the maybes which have driven my obsessive doubt in the past! Being grounded in the sense-based reality of the Here and Now, I have turned the page from the OCD chapter to the new Recovery chapter of my life.

The message of the text is clear: we can create a new story- an alternative, non-OCD story- to be lived, grounded in the `Here and Now' sensory aware reality of our lives! We need not get locked into a dysfunctional way of constructing our personal Universe! Replacing the imaginary story of OCD with an alternative, non-OCD story, drives a new way of being, where one experiences life sensually; through their senses, believing their senses, trusting their senses, honoring their senses and as one will see- responding in accord with their sense-based reality. Healthy living bases its judgment on real world evidence made clear by the senses. In IBA, when the person manages to integrate the different steps, s/he understands OCD as essentially confusing `imaginary possibilities' with `real probabilities'. When we align our lives with what is `probable', over the `imaginary possibilities', and trust our senses, we position ourselves to recover from this disorder. When the person with OCD accepts this message, they no longer need fear the imaginary maybes which have driven their OCD in the past, or need to neutralize for that matter, since they now know the problem was an imaginary story taken as real.