Obsession

People with personality traits, like being a perfectionist or rigidly controlling, may not have OCD, but may have obsessive-compulsive personality disorder. In this illness the patient may spend excessive amounts of energy on details and lose perspective about the overall goals of a task or job. Obsessive personalities tend to be rigid and unreasonable about how things must be done. They tend also to be workaholics, forgoing the pleasures of leisure-time activities over work. They are often inflexible, unaffectionate, lack generosity, or may tend to hoard objects that are worthless and have no sentimental value to them.

Like obsessive-compulsive disorder, it can be time-consuming, but it does not carry with it specific obsessions or compulsions. The obsessive behavior arises more from generalized attitudes about perfectionism than from a specific concern about contamination or obsessive thoughts of a specific nature. The obsessive personality may be able to function quite successfully in a work environment but makes everyone else miserable by demanding the same excessive standards of perfection.