The Keeper of Imagined Law: a discussion on imagination and creativity in OCD

…the man bends over to see through the gate into the inside. When the gatekeeper notices, he laughs and says: “If it tempts you so much, try it in spite of my prohibition. But take note: I am powerful.” (Franz Kafka, 1915)

Vivid imagination and certain types of mental abnormality are curious, but nonetheless, common bedfellows. (Stamatis et al. 2022). Depending on the focus of the given paper, this link is commonly attributed to abnormalities in either the dopamine system or in the connectivity and activation of the default mode network (DMN), which is known for being most active during daydreaming and wakeful rest. In a number of conditions, aspects of heightened imagination have been long perceived as a sort of double edged sword, leading to both greater creativity and to Magical Thinking (or: “beliefs that defy culturally acceptable laws of causality” (Eistein & Menzies 2004), which include but are not limited to belief in clairvoyance, astrology, spiritual influence and telepathy. In OCD this shows up as the belief that certain thoughts/behaviours exert direct causal effects over wider existential outcomes. (Einstein & Menzies 2004)). Both empirical studies and anecdotal reports have suggested associations between generative creative tendencies and schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (BD) (Stamatis et al. 2022). A general link between hyperactive dopaminergic structures of the brain has been observed in Parkinson’s patients treated with dopamine enhancing medication, (Lhommée et al. 2014), and in several studies investigating components of creative thinking in people with ADHD. (Boot et al. 2017).

Relations between imagination in obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and creativity appear somewhat more strained. Much like people with schizophrenia, people with OCD are on average more prone to Magical Thinking. (Einstein & Menzies 2004). They also tend to have very vivid imaginations and possess abnormal DMN connectivity. (Uparikar et al. 2025). However, unlike schizophrenia, OCD does not appear to be correlated with creativity. (Littman-Ovadia, H., & Freidlin, P. 2020, Stamatis et al. 2022).

I: Operationalisation

Before we dive into why this may be, it is necessary to clarify what we mean when we talk about creativity and  imagination.

For our purposes, we will treat creativity as comprised of two distinct subcomponents: divergent (/generative) and convergent (/consolidative) thinking. Divergent thinking is defined as “the inspired creation of new forms, genres or ideas”. (Stamatis et al. 2022). Convergent thinking is defined in a rather more measurable way as an individual’s ability to “harness and polish a product of creative generation into something refined and communicable”. (Stamatis et al. 2022).

For our purposes, we define imagination as “the generation of mental images of experiences that are not in direct sensory perception”, (Uparikar et al. 2025), wherein these imagined experiences can, at extremes, be accompanied by multimodal sensory experiences (e.g.: tactile sensations as well as visual imagery).

II: OCD and Imagination

“Everyone strives after the law,” says the man, “so how is it, that

in these many years, no one except me has requested

entry?” (F.K., 1915)

OCD is characterised by obsessions – unwanted and distressing intrusive thoughts, images, or urges – and compulsions – behavioural rituals carried out to alleviate anxiety caused by obsessions. (Pauls et al. 2002).

The characterisation of OCD as an anxiety disorder is in part due to the anxiety underlying the expression of observable symptoms. However, the obsessions themselves can be understood as a product of “associative imagination” wherein an initial existential fear is attached to a specific object and/or event. (Uparikar et al. 2025). This is further attached to a specific action, imbued by the individual with the causal power to prevent the initial threat from coming to pass. (Oh, and look, Magical Thinking just sauntered onto the stage. Perfect.)

Whenever the execution of the action is followed by the failure of the existential threat to pass, both the preventative causal power of the action and the credibility of the existential threat (the more you have to do to prevent it, the more relevant it must be) is reinforced. In this way, the obsessive-compulsive cycle is self-affirming.

Crucially, while the associative relationship between the existential threat, the object, and the preventative action, persists in its perceived realness on an emotional level, OCD individuals remain intellectually aware that their behaviour is irrational. (Uparikar et al. 2025). Far from allowing them to dismiss their urges, the inability of OCD individuals to reconcile the split between what they know to be true and what they ‘feel to be real’, tends to lead to more confusion, frustration, and helplessness, all of which fuel anxiety and further feed into the obsessive-compulsive cycle.

This contrasts Magical Thinking in schizophrenic individuals, in whom delusions and hallucinations (as they unfold) tend to be perceived as reality. (Fix 2021, Pratiwi et al. 2025). Hence, while both schizophrenic and obsessive-compulsive individuals experience aspects of Magical Thinking, associated unorthodox beliefs concerning laws of causality are experienced differently by both populations.

The imaginative dimension of OCD has found strong foothold in its treatment. OCD patients are exceptionally responsive to cognitive behavioural therapies; indeed, the efficacy of some behavioural therapies (exposure and ritual prevention [EX/RP], for example) has been shown to be greater than most pharmacological treatments. (Simpson et al. 2004). Lending additional credibility to the imagination-anxiety link is the observation that the effect of EX/RP rose when given in combination with imaginal exposure therapy (which is exactly what it sounds like). (Foa et al. 1985).

III: The Default Mode Network

The default mode network is comprised of a series of interconnected subregions that cooperate to generate the state of a wandering, ruminating mind. It is implicated in automatic (‘default’) function and is deactivated when an individual directs focus towards external stimuli, as during active decision making or mindful meditation. (Raichle 2015, Shulman et al. 1997).

In OCD, it generally presents with high connectivity within the network itself, but low functional connectivity. Especially to regions of the brain associated with attention and task execution, such as, the frontoparietal network. (Uparikar et al. 2025). As compared with healthy controls, OCD individuals exhibited hyperactivity in the DMN even when executing externally oriented cognitive tasks, suggesting significant difficulty separating internal and external thought processes. (Gonçalves et al. 2017).

Far from any mental health or psychology seminar, the default mode network (DMN) was first introduced to me in Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life, in the section dedicated to the effect of psilocybin, a compound commonly found in psychoactive mushrooms. When administered, psilocybin causes profound changes in serotonin receptors in the brain, causing a cascade of effects altering consciousness, sensation, emotion, and self-perception. It has been found to, in the short term, dampen the directionality of an individual’s “sense of self”, (Smigielski et al. 2019), and, in the long term, to decrease functional and increase global connectivity in the DMN. (Gattuso et al. 2023).

The trope of creatives taking psychoactive substances to unfold the Jacob’s ladder of their being is much older than the comparably recent synthesis and popularisation of LSD (itself psilocybin-derived). And yet OCD remains consistently negatively correlated with creative generation. So, what the hell?

Mental states are complex and hard to simplify (which is why this blog is having to cut a lot of interesting stuff out, and, if you’re interested in this, you should really just use this as a stepping stone). OCD itself it notorious for its heterogeneity in presentation, onset, and pattern of inheritance. (Pauls et al. 2002). Individuals with OCD are often diagnosed with at least one comorbid disorder. Popular candidates for comorbidity are dissociative disorders. (Soffer-Dudek 2023).

IV: Escapism

Even when not qualifying for formal diagnosis, obsessive compulsive symptoms are consistently correlated with dissociative symptoms. (Soffer-Dudek, 2023). A common subclinical dissociative behaviour correlated with OCD severity is maladaptive daydreaming. (Kowalczyk et al. 2025).

Maladaptive daydreaming, though under-researched and not discussed much in clinical settings, has been rising in prominence and visibility as more observations of its association with a variety of mental disorders – including OCD – have been reported and acknowledged within the scientific community. As other dissociative states, maladaptive daydreaming has been observed to lead to altered states of self-perception, and feelings of separation from reality. (Soffer-Dudek et al. 2025). 

Studies indicate a bidirectional relationship between OCD and maladaptive daydreaming. By lowering social interaction, increasing focus on the internal as opposed to external world, and over-activating dopamine reward circuits, maladaptive daydreaming increases psychological vulnerability. This primes an already genetically predisposed individual for the development or worsening of obsessive compulsive symptoms. Conversely, the anxiety and distress evoked by OCD may lead an already internally focused, ruminating person to seek solace in their own, personal, fantastical inner world, where they are safe and in control. (Agrawal et al. 2025).

It is this turn towards the self and away from the world, perhaps, in conjunction with the persistently recycled and uncritically reaffirmed nature of the utilisation of the imaginative faculties in OCD individuals, that distinguishes their states from those of the artist on psychedelics.

In 1915, the New Year’s edition of the Prague-based Jewish newspaper Selbstwehr (1907–1938) included a parable titled Vor Dem Gesetz…‘Before the Law’. The tale unfolds thus: a man approaches a gatekeeper and asks to be let into the Law. The gatekeeper refuses him and, at his apprehension, informs him that, though he may attempt to enter regardless, there are more gates within, each with a gatekeeper more powerful than the one before. Intimidated, the man settles patiently to wait. As time passes, he grows restless, badgering the gatekeeper with questions, bribing him with everything he had brought for the journey, resorting even to an attempt to collude with the fleas on the gatekeeper’s coat, all to gain permission to enter. Eventually, old and dying, the man asks why nobody else had ever come to be let into the Law. The gatekeeper replies that the gate could admit no other man – it had been assigned only to him. Upon the man’s passing, the gate – always open – is finally closed.

In OCD individuals, the figurative creative gate is, likewise, open. All the faculties to enter are present. But just as the man in Vor dem Gesetz directed all his energy towards gaining permission to enter, all energy in OCD is sunk into the self-defeating maintenance of internal security, discouraging the ‘functional area–DMN’ coordination typical for creative task performance. (Uparikar et al. 2025).

The obsessive-compulsive feedback loop is a punishing cycle of anxiety. Maladaptive daydreaming and associated escapism are exhausting and isolating. There is simply no imaginative capacity or dopamine surge left to fuel creative generation.

V: Inside the Gate

Finally, [the man’s] eyesight grows weak, and he does not know

whether things are really darker, or whether his eyes are

merely deceiving him. But he recognizes now in the darkness an

illumination which breaks inextinguishably out of the gateway

to the law. (F.K., 1915)

On that depressing note, I’d like to propose a silver lining.

Many maladaptive behaviours in OCD result from a turn inwards – hyperactivity in rumination and mental ‘wandering’, along with hypoactivity in brain areas that put internal realignment in context with executive function and engagement with external stimuli. Creative expression, on the other hand – art, pottery, poetry, musical composition, what-have-you – engages, through external generation and mindfulness, those cognitive functions associated with the hypoactivation of the DMN. It provides an alternative, externally oriented means of processing distress.

While research has indicated a negative correlation between OCD and spontaneous creative generation, there is a theoretical foundation for the utilisation of creative activity as a mediator – an agent in shifting focus away from the self and back out to the world.

The self-affirming cycles of OCD are powerful and often debilitating. But it is possible to live with them. And, after professional therapy and/or the first aid of pharmacological treatment, creative pursuits – social or individual, regular or sporadic – may empower some of those hoping to gain independence in the mediation of the vivid imagination that blooms within.

---

References:

Agrawal, A., Sandal, V., & Kaur, R. (2025). Dream on: Maladaptive Daydreaming as a Distinct Psychopathology in a Person with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Indian Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 5(01), 41–44.

Boot, N., Nevicka, B., & Baas, M. (2017). Creativity in ADHD: Goal-Directed Motivation and Domain Specificity. Journal of Attention Disorders, 24(13), 1857-1866. 

https://doi.org/10.1177/1087054717727352

Einstein, D. A., & Menzies, R. G. (2004). The presence of magical thinking in obsessive compulsive disorder. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 42(5), 539–549. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(03)00160-8

Foa, E. B., Steketee, G., & Grayson, J. B. (1985). Imaginal and in vivo exposure: A comparison with obsessive-compulsive checkers. Behavior Therapy, 16(3), 292–302. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7894(85)80017-4

Fox, J. R. (2021). Lived Experiences of Psychosis: Understanding the Gap Between Perception and Reality. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 47(6), 1515–1517. 

https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbab065

Gattuso, J. J., Perkins, D., Ruffell, S., Lawrence, A. J., Hoyer, D., Jacobson, L. H., Timmermann, C., Castle, D., Rossell, S. L., Downey, L. A., Pagni, B. A., Galvão-Coelho, N. L., Nutt, D., & Sarris, J. (2023). Default Mode Network Modulation by Psychedelics: A Systematic Review. International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology, 26(3), 155–188. 

https://doi.org/10.1093/ijnp/pyac074

Gonçalves, Ó. F., Soares, J. M., Carvalho, S., Leite, J., Ganho-Ávila, A., Fernandes-Gonçalves, A., Pocinho, F., Carracedo, A., & Sampaio, A. (2017). Patterns of Default Mode Network Deactivation in Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Scientific Reports, 7(1), 44468. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep44468

Aleksandra Kowalczyk, Punit Shah, Luca D. Hargitai, Florence YN Leung (2025). Investigating OCD, ADHD, and Autistic Traits as Predictors of Maladaptive Daydreaming. 

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/27546330251363392

Lhommée, E., Batir, A., Quesada, J. L., Ardouin, C., Fraix, V., Seigneuret, E., ... & Krack, P. (2014). Dopamine and the biology of creativity: lessons from Parkinson’s disease. Frontiers in neurology, 5, 55. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2014.00055

Littman-Ovadia, H., & Freidlin, P. (2020). Positive Psychopathology and Positive Functioning: OCD, Flourishing and Satisfaction with Life through the Lens of Character Strength Underuse, Overuse and Optimal Use. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 15(2), 529–549. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-018-9701-5

Pauls, D. L., Mundo, Emanuela & Kennedy, J. L. (2002). The pathophysiology and genetics of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Neuropsychopharmacology: The fifth generation of progress, 1609-1621.

Pratiwi, A., Pujianto, J. S., Sukardi, S., Herawati, E., Muhlisin, A., Farjatulla, S. M., & Putra, F. M. (2025). Magical Thinking and Mystical Experience: An Exploration of Delusional Disorder in Schizophrenic Patients. Iranian Journal of Nursing and Midwifery Research, 30(5), 641. 

https://doi.org/10.4103/ijnmr.ijnmr_18_23

Raichle, M. E. (2015). The Brain’s Default Mode Network. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 38(Volume 38, 2015), 433–447. 

https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030

Richards, R. L. (1981). Relationships between creativity and psychopathology: An evaluation and interpretation of the evidence. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 103(Second half), 261–324.

Shulman, G. L., Fiez, J. A., Corbetta, M., Buckner, R. L., Miezin, F. M., Raichle, M. E., & Petersen, S. E. (1997). Common Blood Flow Changes across Visual Tasks: II. Decreases in Cerebral Cortex. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 9(5), 648–663. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.1997.9.5.648

Simpson, H. B., Liebowitz, M. R., Foa, E. B., Kozak, M. J., Schmidt, A. B., Rowan, V., Petkova, E., Kjernisted, K., Huppert, J. D., Franklin, M. E., Davies, S. O., & Campeas, R. (2004). Post-treatment effects of exposure therapy and clomipramine in obsessive–compulsive disorder. Depression and Anxiety, 19(4), 225–233. https://doi.org/10.1002/da.20003

Smigielski, L., Scheidegger, M., Kometer, M., & Vollenweider, F. X. (2019). Psilocybin-assisted mindfulness training modulates self-consciousness and brain default mode network connectivity with lasting effects. NeuroImage, 196, 207–215. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.04.009

Soffer-Dudek, N. (2023). Obsessive-compulsive symptoms and dissociative experiences: Suggested underlying mechanisms and implications for science and practice. Frontiers in Psychology, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1132800

Soffer-Dudek, N., Somer, E., Spiegel, D., Chefetz, R., O’Neil, J., Dorahy, M. J., Cardeña, E., Mamah, D., Schimmenti, A., Musetti, A., Boon, S., Dijke, A. van, Ross, C., Nijenhuis, E., Krause-Utz, A., Dell, P., Gold, S. N., Pietkiewicz, I., Silberg, J., … Middleton, W. (2025). Maladaptive daydreaming should be included as a dissociative disorder in psychiatric manuals: Position paper. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 226(4), 238–242. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2024.279

Stamatis, C. A., & Weisman de Mamani, A. (2022). A latent profile analysis of creativity: Associations of convergent and divergent thinking with subclinical schizotypal, obsessive-compulsive, and affective symptoms. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 16(4), 651–664. 

https://doi.org/10.1037/aca0000378

Uparikar, P. D., Kumari, R., S.s, G., & Das, P. (2025). Can Obsessive Compulsive Disorder be Considered a Disorder of Imagination? A Psychological Perspective. Academic Bulletin of Mental Health. https://doi.org/10.25259/ABMH_10_2025