Jennifer Traig Interview

It's one thing to point and laugh at a human being who , because of a neurological disorder, is particularly challenged by everyday life. It's another entirely when that person masters these challenges and, of their own accord, reflects humorously upon them.

In Devil in the Details: Stories from an Obsessive Girlhood, Jennifer Traig shares with us a childhood in which her undiagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) flummoxes, frustrates, and renders topsy-turvy her otherwise average everyday middle class family. Here, she describes her compulsion to swat furniture:

"It drove everyone crazy, but I couldn't stop. Twenty or thirty times during the course of a meal, I would hop out of my seat, spin around, smack the bookshelf behind my chair, then spin back. It was not an activity I particularly enjoyed. While I was spanking the furniture, my cereal was getting soggy, my sister was eating my bacon, and my parents were expanding my vocabulary with a series of increasingly profane threats. 'Sweet mother of crap, Jennifer. What did the bookcase ever do to you? If you're going to smack anything, smack your sister. She's the one who's eating all your bacon.'"

Traig's memoir is simultaneously hilarious and painful, all the while being rather eye-opening to the struggles of an OCD-afflicted childhood. Ms. Traig is also the author and creator of The Crafty Girl Series, chock full of hip, slick and cool things to do and make on those lazy summer days; Judaikitsch, a campy Jewish bent to the Crafty Girl concept; and "Shut-In Detectives," a regular column she writes with her cousin, Peter McGrath, for McSweeney's Quarterly.

Mark Flanagan: How did you come to write Devil in the Details?

Jennifer Traig: I'm incapable of writing fiction, and I was in the process of learning that first-hand when I decided to start writing my own story instead. I'd been working on a novel and it was just terrible. So I put that aside and started writing about my real-life high school experiences. It was much, much easier, so I just kept going.

mf: Though your retelling of a childhood with OCD is quite hilarious, it must have been maddening as a child to not be understood.

JT: It was. At the time there were no good drugs to treat OCD, and people didn't know what it was, or what caused it. But in a way, that was a good thing - since I don't know, either, I thought I had a lot more control over the situation than I actually did. I didn't know neurochemistry was making me do these things - I thought it was just willfulness I should learn to control. So I really worked at getting better, because I thought that was within my power. Of course, Prozac would have made that a whole lot easier, but I got through it okay.

mf: And yet your parents patiently endured the bizarre behavior, though OCD was not yet understood. I've read that OCD is sometimes genetic, but your parents seemed the exact opposite - extremely laid back.

JT: Exactly. I always figured I just got lucky with the recessive genes. This year's World Series has made me reconsider that, however. We're big Red Sox fans. Half my family suddenly developed all these rituals they had to perform to ensure a Sox win. Now that the Sox have done it, the family is taking credit.

mf: In the book you relate how your OCD sometimes took the form of scrupulosity, in which your obsessions revolved around religious practice. How common is scrupulosity, and when or why is OCD manifested this way?

JT: OCD itself is very common, occurring in about 2-3% of the general population. I'm not sure what percentage of that group has the scrupulous form. Anecdotally, I know tons of people with OCD, but I've only heard of two others with scrupulosity. There are certainly a lot out there, however. Yahoo even hosts a Scrupe Group.

In my case, I think OCD took the form of scrupulosity because religion was already something I was drawn to. Also, it just drove my parents up a wall, and of course that only egged me on.

mf: At the end of Devil in the Details, you describe how your condition sort of just disappeared when you went off to college. Why do you suppose that is?

JT: In rare instances OCD can just disappear, especially pediatric OCD. And there are procedures that will cure it instantly - a lobotomy, for instance. (Unbelievably, this is sometimes performed on patients with intractable OCD to great results. Apparently this is not the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest kind of lobotomy, and leaves the rest of the brain intact). With me it took a little more time and work. My last year of high school was spent in pretty intensive therapy. But yeah, once I started college, it was gone, like magic. I've always found a change of scenery helpful.