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Obsessive has had a wild metaphorical life for some time. Real obsessive-compulsive disorder can be very distressing indeed. Compulsive behaviour, unwanted thoughts, handwashing, repetition, checking, touching, counting, arranging, hoarding or praying are handicaps indeed when connected with anxious fears.
I think John Bunyan described in Grace Abounding an experience of obsessive-compulsive disorder. ‘One morning, as I did lie in my bed, I was, most fiercely assaulted with this temptation, to sell and part with Christ; the wicked suggestion still running in my mind, Sell Him, sell Him, sell Him, sell Him, sell Him, as fast as a man could speak; against which also, in my mind, as at other times, I answered, No, no, not for thousands, thousands, thousands, at least 20 times together.’ That’s no joke.
Paranoia, in Greek signifying madness in general, was narrowed down by Emil Kraepelin (1856–1926) to disorders entailing delusions. As for schizophrenia, which contains elements meaning ‘split mind’ in Greek, its psychiatric use was introduced in the German form schizophrenie by Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939) in 1910. It was formerly known as dementia praecox (as Kraepelin called it).
In any case, psychosis involving paranoia or schizophrenia is a serious thing. Presumably many people think that schizophrenia is a multiple personality disorder, as inaccurately portrayed in The Three Faces of Eve (1957). And, as a metaphor, schizophrenic is used in ordinary speech for ‘undecided’, ‘in two minds’, ‘two-sided’ or ‘compartmentalised’. Till these erroneous metaphors wither, let’s not be obsessed by autistic.
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