As Good As It Gets Analysis

In the 1997 film As Good as It Gets, Melvin Udall suffers from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) which, paired with his misanthropy, puts off the neighbors in his Manhattan apartment building and nearly everyone else with whom he comes into contact. Melvin Udall does many things that seem odd. He's a bully who delights in heaping abuse on everyone unfortunate enough to encounter him yet is impressed when someone has the guts to push back.
He avoids touching other people but deliberately obstructs his favorite waitress so that she has to touch him to pass. He speaks rudely and crudely to people but whispers sweet nothings to a dog: "Don't be like me, don't you be like me. You stay just the way you are because you are a perfect man." He's afraid of many things but mostly afraid of others seeing his fear. He is brutally insensitive to others. He has a ritual to locking his door, turning

to the top lock three times and the middle lock 5 times. He turns the lights in his house on and off 5 times to turn them on or off. He washes his hands with several brand new bars of soap and then discards them after having used them for only a few seconds. He walks around cracks. He eats breakfast at the same table in the same restaurant every day using disposable plastic utensils he brings with him due to his pathological germaphobia. Melvin is even driven so far as to unknowingly to a good deed for the only waitress he allows to wait on him, Carol Connelly. Melvin hires his editor's husband, a skilled pediatrician, to give personal visits and checkups to her ill son, Spencer, at top dollar. Melvin does this for no reason other than he wants Carol, who left work to take care of her ailing son, to come back to work and wait on him so that he can continue to follow his compulsive routine. This exhibits how people with OCD literally cannot stray from the path of their routine and will go to great lengths to avoid doing so.
Other symptoms generally exhibited by people with OCD include checking rituals, such as returning often to check a door lock, even though each time the person finds it locked.

Some people with OCD have violent thoughts. They may fear that they or someone they love will die in a horrible accident or that they will harm someone. One example is drivers who fear that they have run down someone, so they return to the spot to check or give up driving. As is stated in the DSM-IV-TR, people with OCD suffer from recurrent obsessions and/or compulsions. Obsessive thoughts can push aside more important things that the person needs to do and make the person feel compelled to take action. For example, people may follow the same route to school even if it takes them miles out of their way or makes them late for class. Or they may let their doubts about touching the tree cause them to go out and touch it again, only to doubt again whether they took the action. Such people may follow their compulsions because they hope to ease the anxiety they feel about their

obsessions.
Melvin sends his editor's husband, a pediatrician, to make personal visits to Carol's son, Spencer, at top dollar, just so Carol will come in to work and wait on Melvin's table. Clearly this action looks extremely magnanimous, but in context, he is really focused on himself and his needs. Clearly it is ridiculous to pay a fortune for a continuing pediatrician for someone's son, just so they can go back to their job and serve you, but Melvin's daily routine rules him because of his obsessive-compulsive disorder. Melvin Udall avoids stepping on cracks in the sidewalk because that may bring bad luck. A causal connection also exists when he engages in avoidance and ritualistic behaviors as a consequence of his obsessive thoughts about contamination. The character avoids touching people to avoid germs. He brings his own utensils to his diner, so he does not have to risk contamination from unclean silverware. He lays out his plastic-ware in a ritualistic fashion, because this helps him feel less anxious since the world is now more orderly and proper.
After having experienced OCD for a period of time, some subjects recognize that they are a product of their own mind. They can also recognize that their obsessions and/or compulsions are excessive or unreasonable. Although it is made explicitly clear that Melvin suffers from OCD and, in the context of As Good as It Gets, OCD alone, Melvin exhibits some symptoms of other disorders, namely social phobia, paranoid personality, and slight antisocial disorder. Melvin demonstrates symptoms of social phobia. He prefers to stay in his room and work, isolated from his apartment neighbors. Clients who suffer from OCD are frequently very intelligent, much like Melvin, and tend to spend a lot of time ruminating in their heads, at the expense of being centered and relaxed in their body. They are sensitized to their thoughts and impulses, but are often out of touch with their bodies. Therefore, body-focused therapies are recommended.
Clients like Melvin who suffer from OCD have poor social skills because they are wrapped up in their obsessions and compulsions, and therefore are oblivious to normal courtesies, to social context, and to other's perception of them. This point is verified over and over again in the movie as Melvin humorously stumbles through his intrapersonal interaction. Using interpersonal psychotherapy, the therapist first highlights the ways in which the clients' current functioning, social relationships and expectations within these relationships may have been causal in their problems and subsequently helps them explore problem relationships and consider options available to resolve them.