Letters To The Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Sep 20, 2018; 8(3): 105-107
Published online Sep 20, 2018. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v8.i3.105
Psychic euosmia and obsessive compulsive personality disorder
Massimo Pasquini, Annalisa Maraone, Valentina Roselli, Lorenzo Tarsitani
Massimo Pasquini, Annalisa Maraone, Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University, Rome 00185, Italy
Valentina Roselli, Lorenzo Tarsitani, Department of Neurosciences and Mental Health, Umberto I General Hospital, Rome 00185, Italy
Author contributions: All the authors contributed to the conceptualization and the drafting of the paper and they critically reviewed the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Massimo Pasquini, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Human Neurosciences, Sapienza University, viale dell’Università 30, Rome 00185, Italy. massimo.pasquini@uniroma1.it
Telephone: +39-64-9914121 Fax: +39-64-9914591
Received: March 5, 2018
Peer-review started: March 8, 2018
First decision: March 30, 2018
Revised: April 11, 2018
Accepted: May 30, 2018
Article in press: May 30, 2018
Published online: September 20, 2018
Abstract

Patients with obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) often refer to a prompt mood improvement upon encountering good scents in general, or fresh laundry borax on their clothes, pillows or home settings. The Authors propose the new term psychic euosmia in the mean of an overstated psychological predisposition for a real pleasant smell that elicits an immediate sense of pleasure, order and calm. The prompt reactions to a pleasant odor might be explained by the involvement of rhinencephalon and its proximity to mood-related limbic circuits, which bypass the cognitive awareness. Cleanliness may not preclude a subject to enjoy a good smell, even if we are representing smells that resemble freshness, in other words order. A potentially even more important argument is given by the continuum of personality disorders and their variability. Not all personality characteristics led to disturbed behaviors. In evolutionary perspectives having the ability to differentiate between unpleasant and pleasant odors should have made the difference in surviving. On the other hand, psychic euosmia could be considered a normal reaction, but in our clinical experience it is over-represented among OCPD subjects with marked orderliness and disgust. Therefore, detecting psychic euosmia might vicariously confirm the relevance of disgust as a cognitive driver of OCPD. Hereby we support research to characterize psychic euosmia as a feature of orderliness and cleanliness for OCPD.

Keywords: Psychic euosmia, Obsessive compulsive personality disorder, Orderliness, Pleasure, Positive emotion, Pesonality

Core tip: Patients with obsessive compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) often refer to a prompt mood improvement upon encountering good scents in general, or fresh laundry borax on their clothes, pillows or home settings. The Authors propose the new term psychic euosmia in the mean of an overstated psychological predisposition for a real pleasant smell that elicits an immediate sense of pleasure, order and calm. Detecting psychic euosmia might vicariously confirm the relevance of disgust as a cognitive driver of OCPD. Hereby we support research to characterize psychic euosmia as a feature of orderliness and cleanliness for OCPD.