About Me + Process
Process
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Planning
OCD is a multifaceted disorder that presents very differently depending on the person. There are many different subsets of OCD (see index), and people can also have intrusive thoughts fitting more than one category. Despite the range of nuance inherent in OCD as a disorder, the way many people think of OCD remains oddly one-dimensional. This project was created with the goal of analyzing the role media may play in overrepresentation of certain subsets and demographics in depictions of OCD and obsessive-compulsive themes as a whole. However, to come to a conclusion, the first step was to gather data.
Searching
For this project, the goal was to find works that have either had the primary creator confirm that they were designed to intentionally represent OCD, or to find works that have not been confirmed but still have a documentable connection to the OCD community. An example of the latter was the searching process for songs, which utilized the OCD subreddit as primary resource in gathering songs that people with OCD listed as representative of their experiences. The searching process for sources without representation that was confirmed to be intentional by the creator relied primarily on secondary sources to find leads. The searching process involved standard search engines such as Google as well as academic search engines as well, primarily JSTOR, in an effort to find analyses of literature through an obsessive-compulsive lens regardless of the author’s original intent. Once the sources had been gathered, the tagging process began.
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Categorizing
We created multiple categories to further understand patterns in representation. Some of these patterns include genre, media type, how canonical the representation is, whether or not the author is known to have OCD, reception, main and secondary obsessions and compulsions, race/ethnicity, gender, occupation, and language of work. If any of those terms interest you or are not familiar, or you just want to learn more about the process of determining these categories, visit the index here.
Analysis
The table itself contains enough categories that, at a first glance, it’s hard to see which ones hold relevance or signify greater patterns in representation. We have analyzed the data for correlations between specific variables (For example, whether the author is known to have OCD and the gender of the character) to see whether any patterns are evident. For more information on this and to see some of the visuals we’ve created of the correlations we found, click here. Otherwise, the table itself is available here.
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Ray Broad (They/Them)
So, who am I? I’m Ray, an undergraduate at Beloit College majoring in psychology and critical identity studies. Outside of this project, I enjoy photography and listening to music.
As a person with OCD, I am approaching “OCD in Media” both from an academic and personal standpoint. I acknowledge that as an undergraduate, I have no qualifications to diagnose real people or characters or to say with certainty what makes something OCD. I ask that you engage with this project with that in mind! I am always open to feedback and interested collaborators.