Preoccupations and behaviors associated with romantic and parental love - Perspectives on the origin of obsessive-compulsive disorder

This article first examines the hypothesis that the early phases of romanti c love and early parental love share phenomenologically an overlapping set of mental states and behaviors. Second, the authors consider what is known of the neurobiologic substrates of these behaviors. Third, the authors eval uate the hypothesis that these highly conserved behavioral and neural syste ms and the genetic messages that guide their development are intimately inv olved in the pathogenesis of OCD.