Obsessive-compulsive neurosis in relation to parental child-rearing patterns amongst the Greek, Italian, and Anglo-Australian subjects.

Obsessive-compulsive neurosis was found to be manifest within a relatively normal (students) population. Obsessional subjects obtained from a clinical sample were compared with those obtained from normal students population on symptom, trait, resistance and interference scales of the Modified Leyton Obsessional Inventory with no significant differences in scores found. Obsessional subjects across three different ethnic/cultural backgrounds (Greeks, Italians and Anglo-Australians) consistently rated their parents as more rejecting and overprotecting and less emotionally warm in their child-rearing practices when compared with normal control subjects. The significant differences found between the obsessionals and the normal control subjects are considered as strongly indicative of the psychopathological conditions of the obsessionals found in a normal population and a differentiating factor between the two groups. Two sub-classes of obsessive-compulsive subjects were distinguished and compared in relation to their perceived parental rearing characteristics. But no significant differences were found. Thus, the notion that compulsive checkers as opposed to compulsive cleaners emerge from two different parental rearing patterns was not sustained in this instance.