An estimated one million people in Britain, and four million in the USA suffer so much from obsessional thoughts and behaviour that normal life is impossible. Intrusive, repetitive thoughts, and behaviour rituals such as compulsive checking and hand-washing, are an increasingly common form of mental illness. This book, the first to be aimed at the general reader, helps sufferers to overcome these obsessions. The author, Dr Frederick Toates, is an experimental psychologist at the Open University and a former sufferer from obsessional thoughts himself.