I’ve been researching different types of OCD for my current Gotham fic and I’ve come to the realisation that interpreting Ed’s character arcs through the lens of him having harm OCD is absolutely wild. Especially for the specific intrusive thought of harming the people you love the most.
Imagine already having intrusive thoughts about harming someone you have a crush on, being disgusted by those thoughts, and then, when you’re not in the right state of mind (as evidenced by the fact that he believed she would react positively to him confessing to killing her ex and also the fact that he was hallucinating right beforehand) you accidentally kill her right after consummating what is probably the only romantic relationship you’ve ever had with someone up until that point.
THEN you bump into a woman who looks exactly like your first ever girlfriend but she’s super cool with riddles and the idea of you being obsessed with trying not to kill her, so your intrusive thoughts intensify to the point that you try to break up with her because the idea of harming her is so scary that you’d rather not have love in your life than risk the same thing happening.
THEN, when she says she doesn’t want to break up, she forcibly reenacts the night you killed your girlfriend while dressed exactly like her. And because your intrusive thoughts are telling you that if you stay with her she’s going to die, the morning after you sleep with her you’re constantly checking your watch because she hasn’t contacted you yet. You start reassurance seeking, saying things like “You don’t think that something happened?” to your friend over breakfast so he’ll say “no” and you’ll find a bit of solace in that.
AND THEN you get a call and you find out she’s dead. So you go to the morgue and see a perfect replica of your first girlfriend that you were also obsessed with not hurting, dead in the same room that you dismembered your first girlfriend’s body.
AND THEN you find out that the person who killed her was literally your only friend in the world, whom you canonically refer to as “the best friend that you’ve ever had” and the person you went to for help to work through your anxiety about your intrusive thoughts of your girlfriend dying. So you kill the best friend you’ve ever had and then afterwards your brain starts going “hey… that guy you just killed? You loved him too btw :)”
AND THEN the whole weird thing with Lee happened and he literally would rather kill himself and try every medication he can get his hands on than give in to what he believes is an unavoidable compulsion to kill the people he loves, but after the scene with Oswald in Arkham he’s obsessively trying to reject the idea that he loves her, only for them to end up in a relationship and stab each other, which would have killed them both if not for Oswald’s intervention.
AND THEN when he wakes up someone put a chip in his brain and while he was under their control he blew up a building filled with innocents, including children.
(From his reaction to learning that he was the cause of Haven’s destruction, before he knew about the chip, it seemed like the fact that children were harmed in particular was a large source of his distress.)
After a certain point your intrusive thoughts wouldn’t even have to try, they’d have so much material to work with I’d have absolutely no idea how someone would deal with them.
I think that for me it’s a bit of a blessing in disguise for Gotham’s approach to Ed’s hallucinations to fluctuate as much as it does, because it allows for different interpretations. It seems to largely be going for the impression of him having an unspecified dissociative disorder (possibly DID or OSDD), but I’ve also seen posts speculating that his hallucinations function as an externalised representation of his intrusive thoughts, which I also really like. OCD tends to play on that which you hate or fear the most, so the fact that so many of his hallucinations revolve around his fear of harming others, or, as with Oswald, of admitting that he loves someone he’s killed, it makes the scene in season four where Oswald “releases” these compulsions all the more devastating to watch for me knowing that he’d rather die than “give in” to them.
It also makes me realise just how smart Oswald’s attempt to stop Ed from shooting him at the pier in season three was, because he pulls out all the stops—you were a jittery loser before me, there is no you without me, etc.—and though we know from Ed’s dialogue later in the season that these attempts did have an impact on him, the one that really stands out to me is his first attempt. It simultaneously showcases what is, in my opinion, Oswald’s best skill—his specialised, intimate understanding of people and how to manipulate them in just the right way—combined with what he’s learned about Edward throughout the course of their friendship. He knows for a fact that Ed has a clear distinction between the harm that he fears causing to the people he loves and the harm that he enjoys, relishes in, or doesn’t regret.
Specifically, what Oswald says is, “This won’t be a crime of passion or self-preservation. This will be the cold-blooded murder of someone you love.” He frames it as something that will result in Ed following through on his intrusive thoughts that he fears so much—and this is a really excellent attempt at saving his own life. It shows just how well he knows Ed and how he operates. He’s killed before and he’s found enjoyment in killing and harming others, but there is a distinct difference between his reaction to killing Kristen versus his other victims up until this point.
I think that there are lots of ways to interpret Ed’s response of “I don’t love you,” because it feels to me that it’s pretty obvious he canonically loves Oswald. I’d say alexithymia is playing a pretty big role here, but in the context of harm OCD specifically for harming people you love, it makes sense that Ed would say this, as the very idea of admitting that he feels anything positive for Oswald means that he is harming someone he cares about, which means that his worst fear is coming true and that all of his intrusive thoughts were correct. It also seems like Oswald’s fate was sealed by the fact that Ed had already decided, before knowing that Oswald was the culprit, that he would avenge Isabella, resulting in a war between his compulsion to finish whatever he started and his fear of acting on his intrusive thoughts.
Anywho, this is just a messy braindump cause while I knew that OCD was an important aspect of this character, once I got into the specifics there was just so much fun stuff to chew on :D