1) Psychoanalytical theory: Psychoanalytical approach attributes obsession to a fixation to the anal phase of life. Too strict toilet training predisposes the child toward over-conscientiousness.
The unconscious impulse to soil and play with filth, natural in a child of anal phase is so strongly prohibited that the child takes recourse to defenses like reaction formation by being overly clean and undoing by rituals.
Paradoxically, obsession also provides a way of vicarious satisfaction of the prohibited impulse. If you are thinking for the whole day about how to stay away from dirt, you are, in a way, thinking of dirt only.
2) Learning theories: Neutral stimuli may be associated through classical conditioning with frightening ideas and become capable of eliciting intense anxiety.
For example, Raj may have acquired the fear of dirty things on the street because he was thinking of something negative while walking on the street, and the object on the street became associated with it. Since the connection was not logical, Raj could not explain it. Learning theory further states that since compulsions reduce anxiety to a large extent, they become reinforced and continue in a cyclic manner.
One implication of this theory is that if you expose the person to the object that provokes obsession, and then prevent the ritualistic compulsive behaviour, the reinforcement of the compulsion would be withdrawn. Gradually, the person would be able to understand that anxiety reduction is possible without compulsive acts.
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