Quotes from Lee Baer

The Imp of the Perverse will try to torment you with thoughts of whatever it is you consider to be the most inappropriate or awful thing that you could do. To illustrate this point, each of my patients whose thoughts are summarized below (many of whom you'll meet in later chapters) told me that his or her particular bad thoughts focused squarely on whatever was for him or her the most inappropriate, awful, or shameful thing he or she could think of doing:3

Thankfully, as you will see, the two facts that, (1) you are upset by your bad thoughts, and (2) that you have never acted on them, are sure signs that you will never act on them.

Having OCD, and tending to see things as either black or white and in perfectionistic terms, as well as being overconscientious, he was extremely hard on himself and insisted that he somehow be guaranteed that he would not one day snap and act on his thoughts. At one point, Frank told me that he was now concerned that he was feeling too little anxiety, which made him think that perhaps he was a sociopath without a conscience after all and would end up like Jeffrey Dahmer!