Charles Benefiel (born 1967) is a contemporary American outsider artist from California. As he has severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), almost all of his work is done via stippling. He currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Born in Venice Beach, California, Benefiel experienced a mental breakdown in 1997 and was urged by friends to go to a mental health center, where he was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. His work has since been featured in various psychiatry and art magazines. His art is generally done on a large scale, some pieces being up to 5 x 8 feet in size; he does most of his work through a neurotic method of stippling, without any preliminary designs. After the stippling is complete, the works are soaked in tea and treated with chemicals to give an old look. [1]
He renders his work through a process of stippling done with very precise rapidograph technical pens; his pieces are done without any preliminary drawings, and with no lines to guide the composition. As Benefiel states, 'There was no need to stay in the lines, because there are no lines.' [2] In his representational drawings, Benefiel works from the center outward, and in his drawings of rows of numbers he stipples the characters from left to right as they would appear on a typed or printed page. As he draws, he counts the dots until a certain point, then repeats the sequence. Once the dots are complete, Benefiel tones the paper with tea, to add visual depth as well as a look of age. The idea of this method is to provide an exceptional degree of incremental control where possibilities for spontaneity and error are all but erased, to aesthetically resemble photographic grain, and to serve and complement his OCD. He also produces pictures with figures reminiscent of a giant sized child's doll, often positioned in the centre of a piece and surround by numbers. [3]
In the early 2000s, while living in New York City and New Mexico, Benefiel created the "Random Numeric Repeater" series of ink and watercolour on paper using what he described as a "dumb language", a random sequence of dots, circles, and dashes. Each symbol represents a corresponding numeral and sound that he made when creating the drawings. [4] [5] Later, Benefiel returned to his home state of California after residing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for five years where he had created and managed The Loom, a multi-use building that incorporated light manufacturing and artist's studios into a 250,000 square foot former factory.
While living in San Diego, Benefiel had two massive cardiac arrests six months apart and had extensive brain damage due to hypoxia, a lack of oxygen to the brain. Benefiel experienced extensive aphasia, the loss of his short and long-term memory, and the skills of visualization and hand eye coordination required for his drawing technique. Due to these disabilities, Benefiel required a long program of rehabilitation to recover many of these cognitive skills that were impacted by these events. He also began practicing Vipassana meditation to help rebuild the neural pathways that were harmed by the hypoxia.
He now lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he is beginning to explore incorporating art back into his life as a form of spiritual healing. [6]
Obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) is a cluster C personality disorder marked by a spectrum of obsessions with rules, lists, schedules, and order, among other things. Symptoms are usually present by the time a person reaches adulthood, and are visible in a variety of situations. The cause of OCPD is thought to involve a combination of genetic and environmental factors, namely problems with attachment.
Scrupulosity is the pathological guilt/anxiety about moral or religious issues. Although it can affect nonreligious people, it is usually related to religious beliefs. It is personally distressing, dysfunctional, and often accompanied by significant impairment in social functioning. It is typically conceptualized as a moral or religious form of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). The term is derived from the Latin scrupus, a sharp stone, implying a stabbing pain on the conscience. Scrupulosity was formerly called scruples in religious contexts, but the word scruple now commonly refers to a troubling of the conscience rather than to the disorder.
Clomipramine, sold under the brand name Anafranil among others, is a tricyclic antidepressant (TCA). It is used in the treatment of various conditions, most-notably obsessive–compulsive disorder but also many other disorders, including panic disorder, major depressive disorder, trichotilomania, body dysmorphic disorder and chronic pain. It has also been notably used to treat premature ejaculation and the cataplexy associated with narcolepsy.
An intrusive thought is an unwelcome, involuntary thought, image, or unpleasant idea that may become an obsession, is upsetting or distressing, and can feel difficult to manage or eliminate. When such thoughts are associated with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), Tourette's syndrome (TS), depression, body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), and sometimes attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), the thoughts may become paralyzing, anxiety-provoking, or persistent. Intrusive thoughts may also be associated with episodic memory, unwanted worries or memories from OCD, post-traumatic stress disorder, other anxiety disorders, eating disorders, or psychosis. Intrusive thoughts, urges, and images are of inappropriate things at inappropriate times, and generally have aggressive, sexual, or blasphemous themes.
Sexual obsessions are persistent and unrelenting thoughts about sexual activity. In the context of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), these are extremely common, and can become extremely debilitating, making the person ashamed of the symptoms and reluctant to seek help. A preoccupation with sexual matters, however, does not only occur as a symptom of OCD, they may be enjoyable in other contexts.
Exposure therapy is a technique in behavior therapy to treat anxiety disorders.
A transformation obsession is a lesser known symptom and manifestation of obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).
Primarily obsessional obsessive–compulsive disorder, also known as purely obsessional obsessive–compulsive disorder, is a lesser-known form or manifestation of OCD. It is not a diagnosis in the DSM-5. For people with primarily obsessional OCD, there are fewer observable compulsions, compared to those commonly seen with the typical form of OCD. While ritualizing and neutralizing behaviors do take place, they are mostly cognitive in nature, involving mental avoidance and excessive rumination. Primarily obsessional OCD takes the form of intrusive thoughts often of a distressing, sexual, or violent nature.
Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental and behavioral disorder in which an individual has intrusive thoughts and feels the need to perform certain routines (compulsions) repeatedly to relieve the distress caused by the obsession, to the extent where it impairs general function.
Stanley Jack Rachman was a South African-born psychologist who worked primarily with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other anxiety disorders. He spent much of his career based in the UK and Canada.
Adam Scott Radomsky is a Canadian psychologist who studies obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and related anxiety disorders. He is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, and was editor-in-chief of the Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
The delayed-maturation theory of obsessive–compulsive disorder suggests that obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) can be caused by delayed maturation of the frontal striatal circuitry or parts of the brain that make up the frontal cortex, striatum, or integrating circuits. Some researchers suspect that variations in the volume of specific brain structures can be observed in children that have OCD. It has not been determined if delayed-maturation of this frontal circuitry contributes to the development of OCD or if OCD is the ailment that inhibits normal growth of structures in the frontal striatal, frontal cortex, or striatum. However, the use of neuroimaging has equipped researchers with evidence of some brain structures that are consistently less adequate and less matured in patients diagnosed with OCD in comparison to brains without OCD. More specifically, structures such as the caudate nucleus, volumes of gray matter, white matter, and the cingulate have been identified as being less developed in people with OCD in comparison to individuals that do not have OCD. However, the cortex volume of the operculum (brain) is larger and OCD patients are also reported to have larger temporal lobe volumes; which has been identified in some women patients with OCD. Further research is needed to determine the effect of these structural size differences on the onset and degree of OCD and the maturation of specific brain structures.
David S. Shannahoff-Khalsa is a researcher in mind-body dynamics. He has published widely in scientific journals and regularly presents full day courses at the American Psychiatric Association and other national and international conferences. Shannahoff-Khalsa has also published three books outlining his years of experience using Kundalini Yoga meditation as taught by Yogi Bhajan to understand and treat psychiatric disorders.
Daniel A. Geller is an Australian American pediatrician and psychiatrist who specializes in the treatment of pediatric obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). Geller is triple board certified in Pediatrics, Psychiatry, and Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, and is director of the Pediatric OCD Program at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Euripedes Constantino Miguel Filho is a Brazilian psychiatrist. He is a graduate of the Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade de São Paulo. He currently holds the title of Full Professor and is the Vice-Head of the FMUSP Department of Psychiatry. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Duke University and at Yale University, as well as being a Research Consultant for Harvard University School of Medicine Massachusetts General Hospital. Miguel has authored or co-authored more than 150 articles published in journals indexed for the major international databases. Since 2004, he has coordinated the Consórcio Brasileiro de Pesquisa dos Transtornos do Espectro Obsessivo-Compulsivo. He is a researcher for the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo and is the recipient of a 1B Research Productivity Grant from the Brazilian Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico. He is also the Director of the multicenter Instituto Nacional de Psiquiatria do Desenvolvimento para Infância e Adolescência, which was established under the auspices of the Institutos Nacionais de Ciência e Tecnologia. In the area of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), he is coordinating his third FAPESP-sponsored Program Grant, which is focused on the investigation of neural circuits and biomarkers involved in OCD through the study of behavioral paradigms of fear and anxiety.
Wayne Goodman is an American psychiatrist and researcher who specializes in Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). He is the principal developer, along with his colleagues, of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale (Y-BOCS).
Joseph Zohar is the director of Psychiatry and the Anxiety and Obsessive Compulsive Clinic at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel HaShomer and professor of psychiatry at Tel Aviv University, Israel. He is the founder of the World Council on Anxiety as well as the Israeli Consortium on PTSD. He currently leads the chief installation of the Israeli Defense Force for the treatment of PTSD. He is a member of the executive committee of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology, of which he is a former president, and chairman of the Expert Platform on Mental Health.
Jonathan Stuart Abramowitz is an American clinical psychologist and Professor in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). He is an expert on obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and anxiety disorders whose work is highly cited. He maintains a research lab and currently serves as the Director of the UNC-CH Clinical Psychology PhD Program. Abramowitz approaches the understanding and treatment of psychological problems from a cognitive-behavioral perspective.
John Piacentini, PhD, ABPP, is an American clinical child and adolescent psychologist, and professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. He is the director of the Center for Child Anxiety, Resilience, Education and Support (CARES), and the Child OCD, Anxiety and Tic Disorders Program at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior.
Carolyn I. Rodriguez is a Puerto Rican psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and clinical researcher developing treatments for obsessive compulsive disorder as well as mapping circuit dysfunction in the human brain. Rodriguez holds appointments in both clinical and academic departments at Stanford University. Rodriguez is a Clinical Lab Director at the Stanford Center for Cognitive and Neurobiological Imaging, an associate professor and Associate Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and a Director of several specialized translational research programs.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)