ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how, in obsessive-compulsive disorder patients but also in non-clinical subjects, this mental state, and more specifically the fear of being guilty of unjust harm, orients the cognitive processes that elaborate information regarding fear and safety and weigh the outcomes of attempted solutions. The obsessive patient, then, has recourse to the dialectical/adversarial strategy because he focuses on the hypothesis of danger insofar as he fears being accused of having brought about the danger in the first place. He tries to falsify the hypothesis of danger because he wants to defend himself from the accusation and therefore he wants to contest it. The fear of guilt implicates cognitive processes characteristic of obsessive patients. More specifically, fear of guilt activates the goal of avoiding self-blame for having underestimated dangers that one has the duty to prevent and for having neglected to take necessary precautionary measures.
