TIL about Symmetry OCD
Today I learned:
- Curious about the personality affectations that surround perfectionism, I read about OCD and OCPD.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition (DSM-5) describes OCPD as “a pervasive pattern of preoccupation with orderliness, perfectionism, and mental and interpersonal control, at the expense of flexibility, openness, and efficiency.”
- I was pulling a thread about organization, ordering, arranging, etc, and discovered a particular manifestation of OCD involving symmetry and order.
- Symmetry ODC is described as becoming “fixated on the position and arrangement of certain objects.”
- Related to another form of OCD: Ordering & Arranging OCD
Take my constant desire for symmetry in level design, my need to create task lists and tick them off when complete, my constant nagging insistence on consistency, my endless nitpicking about pretty much anything I’m presented with, my inability to go out wearing creased clothes and my weird lining things up problem, that I won’t bore you with. All of which can cause my workmates to want to scream in frustration or point and laugh.
[…]
Symmetrically Inclined I’ve always loved symmetry in architecture, which made creating well-balanced multiplayer levels nice and simple for me: I didn’t constantly feel the need to shake things up from base to base, and everyone knows the best levels tend to be mirror images, so I was made for the job.