Abstract

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and other psychiatric disorders can interfere with a person’s capacity to control the nature of his mental states and how they issue in his decisions and actions. Insofar as this sort of control is identified with free will, and psychiatric disorders can impair this control, these disorders can impair free will. The will can be compromised by dysregulated neural networks that disable the mental mechanisms necessary to regulate thought, motivation, and action. Neural and mental dys-function result in the maladaptive and pathological behaviors associated with these disorders. In “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Free Will, and Control,” Gerben Meynen (2012) rightly ..