Leigh

That's right, and after I wrote that response, I did wonder if you were primarily thinking about about underlying causes. I appreciate your cynicism about whether DSM diagnoses are truly "cutting reality at its joints" (they are not); the diagnoses exist much more dimensionally than the categorically-organized DSM would suggest, and there is also a great deal of overlap ("comorbidity") among them, indicating that the disorders are not entirely separate from one another. Certain ones tend to cluster together. The DSM provides descriptive checklists of sympt... (read more)

In response to the question, "What about OCPD?", I think of it as being quite similar to OCD, but with ego-syntonic compulsions; that is, the person with OCPD is typically not troubled by his or her compulsive behaviors and/or views them as desirable--moral, even. Rarely will a person present him- or herself for psychological treatment specifically for OCPD; usually, it is family members that suggest there is a problem and encourages that the person seek treatment.

OCD is different, in that people tend to feel tormented by their felt need to engage in com... (read more)

Thanks for your response! I don't think you need to read any Skinner for now; the work you are doing is more important. But if you wanted to, Science and Human Behavior is a classic text, and Verbal Behavior is another (some say Chomsky was more correct about how we learn language, but that's not true). I mention Skinner because I see the behavioral principles coming to light in some of what I read about RL and other forms of training, and I wanted to give him credit for describing these principles of learning so eloquently long ago.

Hi, Steven! Just hopping in here to say that curiosity and desire for novelty would fit in with a Skinnerian radical behaviorist perspective, since from this perspective, mental events are behaviors, too. These could be described from either a negative reinforcement or positive reinforcement paradigm:

Negative reinforcement contingency: boredom--(leads to)novelty-seeking behavior--(leads to) removal of boredom

Positive reinforcement contingency: I am not experiencing pleasurable mental stimulation--I engage in an interesting/novelty-seeking behavior--I am ... (read more)