ABSTRACT
This chapter seems clear from the evidence that drugs can have a major role to play in the treatment of obsessive-compulsive disorder. An organic background at the basal ganglia level has been suspected in the disease on the basis of anatomical, clinical and pharmacological findings. Patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder have been studied from widely differing perspectives, one perspective has been that the syndrome reflects a dysfunction of the brain. Reports of obsessive-compulsive disorder in other brain diseases can be divided into three main categories: Basal ganglia disorders, Lesions of the posterior pituitary, producing diabetes insipidus, and Physical injuries to the brain. The clinical categories of brain disease which may give rise to obsessive-compulsive phenomena are various; there is no one clinical neurological condition which invariably gives rise to the pattern of psychiatric disorder.
