What's the difference between obsession and preoccupation?

Obsession


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of besieging.
  • (n.) The state of being besieged; -- used specifically of a person beset by a spirit from without.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) It is possible that the marked elevations in obsessive-compulsive symptomatology and in interpersonal sensitivity may reflect in part a sensitization to excessive performance demands.
  • (2) Associated features include previous illness phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
  • (3) As a young teenager I was obsessed with sex: to be held in a man's arms would confirm that I was a woman.
  • (4) While the Spielberg of popular myth is Mr Nice Guy, Lean was known as an obsessive, cantankerous tyrant who didn't much like actors and was only truly happy locked away in the editing suite.
  • (5) Efficacy assessments included the child version of the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale and the National Institute of Mental Health Global rating scale.
  • (6) Rigorously designed clinical trials have demonstrated the efficacy and safety of fluoxetine in adults with major depressive disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) but not in patients below 18 years old.
  • (7) The authors report four patients with disabling obsessive thoughts who responded in dramatic fashion to antidepressant medication.
  • (8) In this article, obsessive compulsive disorder, its subtypes, and epidemiologic features are described.
  • (9) So do the IEA's obsessions just happen to coincide with those of the cigarette firms?
  • (10) Atropine-comatose therapy was performed in 18 patients with schizophrenia and disorders in the framework of an obsessive-syndrome.
  • (11) The bureau seemed obsessed instead with classified material that flowed through a private email server set up by Clinton’s aides.
  • (12) A principal axis factor analysis with a Promax rotation was performed on the Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale.
  • (13) The main phenomenological differences between hypochondriasis and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder have been interpreted as expressive of the lower and higher levels of intrapsychic integration respectively.
  • (14) Despite the presence of some side effects, such as easily controlled seizures (9%) and transient mania (6%), the results of this investigation support the use of cingulotomy as a potentially effective treatment for patients with severe and disabling obsessive-compulsive disorder.
  • (15) You described it as being an obsession," the judge said.
  • (16) The media is utterly self-obsessed and we get more ink than perhaps we should do.
  • (17) Michael Philpott's obsession with Lisa Willis was nothing to do with you.
  • (18) The persona that emerged during day two of Breivik's 10-week trial was a rambling, repetitive obsessive, fixated on a threat he never truly managed to articulate, but which involved "cultural Marxists", whom he claimed had destroyed Norway by using it as "a dumping ground for the surplus births of the third world".
  • (19) One that sentimentality is obsessed by while funds are disproportionately siphoned away from the other 20,933 species facing extinction .
  • (20) Reality television molded Trump into the ratings and polls-obsessed performer that we know today, and created a new generation of Americans ready to be entertained by him.

Preoccupation


Definition:

  • (n.) The act of preoccupying, or taking possession of beforehand; the state of being preoccupied; prepossession.
  • (n.) Anticipation of objections.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) At junior level, safety is certain to become a greater preoccupation for parents.
  • (2) I’d argue, furthermore, that these preoccupations are preventing people from seeking support, as if nothing could be more the opposite of these things than admission of the need for help.
  • (3) It was found that psychiatric and nursing observations corresponded over a wide area of psychopathology: anxiety, tension, depression, hostility, preoccupation with hypochondriacal, grandiose and self-depreciatory ideas, hallucinosis, thought disorders, mannerisms, retardation, emotional withdrawal, hypomanic activity and uncooperative behaviour.
  • (4) Staff factors that may permit or encourage self-destructive acts include poor communications, staff disagreements, scapegoating of patients, poor staff judgment, staff self-preoccupation, and reversal of staff-patient roles.
  • (5) Nevertheless, Dickens's preoccupation with class in Great Expectations strikes a chord with Coltrane, who gives a good idea of what it means to him when he recalls coming across a few Bullingdon Club types outside a restaurant in Soho one night.
  • (6) Its position within medicine is still insecure, partly because of a one-sided preoccupation at times with psychodynamic or social factors.
  • (7) The Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) patients evidence greater depression (p less than 0.02), while the osteoarthrosis (OA) patients had higher levels of manifest aggressivity (p less than 0.01) and more somatic preoccupation (p less than 0.02).
  • (8) Reported effects of balding reflected considerable preoccupation, moderate stress or distress, and copious coping efforts.
  • (9) The fact that we as a country, as a national community, have been talking about this one way or another for a century or more suggests that it is not a preoccupation or an obsession for one party or one politician.
  • (10) At the same time, however, the use of a surrogate or "false colors" has had the unfortunate effect of raising and sustaining public fears and preoccupations which, in at least some cases, have probably diverted our attention away from more important contributors to disease and premature mortality.
  • (11) In the case of AIDS patients, a preoccupation with community care alternatives to hospitalization fails to acknowledge the central role of medical care in the management of the disease.
  • (12) Analysis of the appetite data showed that PSMF subjects reported significantly less hunger and preoccupation with eating than did liquid diet subjects during 2 of the 4 weeks on a very-low-calorie diet.
  • (13) This is a party on its way to becoming a multinational libertarian sect, whose preoccupations are no longer those either of much of its electorate or of the business community – wrestling with how genuinely to innovate, invest and motivate workforces in a world of increasingly amoral, ownerless companies so beloved and promoted by the sect.
  • (14) It is more important to understand this now than ever before, because never before have we been so preoccupied with social and economic issues: a preoccupation that is threatening to divert our attention from the main determinants of our specialty's future viability--the acquisition and application of new knowledge.
  • (15) However, most of the women felt that their doctors did not provide them with enough advice on this topic, and the women were almost unanimous in their criticism of the preoccupation of magazines with slimness.
  • (16) In the last few years, concern about cholesterol has become a national preoccupation.
  • (17) Lacan's more structural approach to the inner world provides an important counterweight to Kohut's narrow preoccupation with the two-person field, while Kohut's concept of maternal mirroring lends a humane dimension to the icy realms of Lacan's intellectual structures.
  • (18) Aspects other than a preoccupation with health often have a strong influence upon an individual's decision whether or not to engage in exercise.
  • (19) As the NHS England chief executive, Simon Stevens, commented : “No one should pretend just combining two financially leaky buckets will magically create a watertight funding solution.” But the preoccupation with structure and funding omits a key piece of the integration puzzle: culture.
  • (20) Preoccupation to define the nutritional status of Puerto Rican families migrating to the United States, motivated the present research.