“A great deal of study has been devoted to the freedom-of-choice issue in the case of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), a condition that has important features in common with addiction. We can learn a lot about psychic freedom from this research. Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, Professor of Psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, has devoted decades to studying OCD and has described his findings in two fascinating books. In OCD, certain circuits of the brain do not work normally. Several parts seem 'locked' together -- just as if a car's transmission was stuck so that turning on the engine automatically set the wheels into motion. In OCD, the neurological gears that would uncouple the engine of thought from the wheels of action are stuck. Completely irrational thoughts or beliefs trigger repeated behaviours that are useless and even harmful. The obsessive-compulsive person is intellectually aware that his impulse to, say, wash his hands for the hundredth time lacks reason, but he cannot stop himself. Owing his stuck neurological clutch, the idea of having to cleanse himself yet again leads automatically to hand washing. Dr. Schwartz and his colleagues at UCLA have demonstrated the mechanisms of his 'brain lock,' as he has called it, on brain scans. OCD may be an extreme example of how the brain can dictate behaviour even against our will, but OCD sufferers are different from other people only in degree. Much of what we do arises from automatic programming that bypasses conscious awareness and may even run contrary to our intentions, as Dr. Schwartz points out: The passive side of mental life, which is generated solely and completely by brain mechanisms, dominates the tone and tenor of our day-to-day, even second-to-second experience. During the quotidian business of daily life, the brain does indeed operate very much as a machine does. Decisions that we may believe to be freely made can arise from unconscious emotional drives or subliminal beliefs. They can be dictated by brain mechanisms programmed early in childhood and determined by events of which we have no recollection. The stronger a person's automatic brain mechanisms and the weaker the parts of the brain that can impose conscious control, the less true freedom that person will be able to exercise in her life. In OCD, and in many other conditions, no matter how intelligent and well-meaning the individual, the malfunctioning brain circuitry may override rational judgment and intention. Almost any human being, when overwhelmed by stress or powerful emotions, will act or react not from intention but from mechanisms that are set off deep in the brain, rather than being generated in the conscious and volitional segments of the cortex. When acting from a driven or triggered state, we are not free.”