ABSTRACT
IN A would-be definite inquiry that I have been making into obsessional illness, I have been struck by the variety of problems and the difficulty of stating them. This would no doubt be true of any psychiatric topic as wide as obsessional illness, but here I found to my surprise that it would be harder to state the problems clearly than to present the alleged solutions offered in the literature. Some of these solutions deal with problems that are indefinite and indeed unsubstantial; others are global; they cover so wide a field that it is difficult to examine them without examining also the nature of man. It may well be that obsessional illness cannot be understood altogether without understanding the nature of man, or perhaps inquired into profitably without much bold speculation and the use of methods as yet unthought of or suspect; but one is reminded of Descartes’ rules—to doubt everything that is not clear, to avoid precipitancy, and to divide up every difficulty into as many parts as are possible and necessary for its better solution: also to proceed from the simplest and plainest facts. Obsessional illness has not usually been treated on such lines. I have tried in this paper to raise the difficult issues that seem to need clarification before an answer can well be sought, much less accepted.
