The Vacuum of the Mind: A Self-Report on the Phenomenology of Autistic, Obsessive-Compulsive, and Depressive Comorbidity.

The object of the article is to explore the phenomenological nature of the intersections between the autism spectrum disorder known as Asperger’s syndrome (AS),1 obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD),2 obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD),3 and Mmajor depressive disorder (MDD)4 when all the four disorders are comorbid in a single person. The method of this article is to use myself as the basis of a case study for the purpose of exploring the phenomenology of the intersections. As a client of a community mental health center, my current psychiatric diagnosis is Asperger’s disorder, OCD, and MDD (in partial remission) on Axis I and OCPD on Axis II. No claim is made here that the findings in this article are generalizable to larger populations of individuals who have all 4 of these disorders. Rather, the clinical value of this article will be determined by the extent to which a mentally disturbed individual can describe and analyze a segment of his psychiatric history to the effect of illuminating possible relationship between autistic, obsessive-compulsive, and depressive states.