p>Most books about obsessive-compulsive disorder fall into two categories. First, there are the memoirs – first-person accounts of journeys through OCD’s hell. (Fletcher Wortmann’s Triggered and Traci Foust’s Nowhere Near Normal, for example, offer enormously moving and dead-accurate pictures of what it’s like to live this life.)

Second are the therapeutic volumes. Written by clinical and research psychologists, these are intended to educate a lay audience on the quirks and eccentricities of this elusive disease. (Lee Baer’s The Imp of the Mind and Jeffrey Schwartz’ You Are Not Your Brain have been particularly useful to me.)

In Overcoming OCD: A Journey to Recovery, Janet Singer and Dr. Seth Gillihan have managed a wonderful trick: they’ve combined the memoir and the research-based text in a way that leaves each enhanced.