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SilasBarta comments on Would Your Real Preferences Please Stand Up? - Less Wrong
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As I understand it, a person (or at least some people) with OCD will need to, say, lock a door precisely nine times. If he somehow locked it 11 times, he'd be very distressed. It's like I'm happy when I'm 99.9% sure my hands are clean, but miserable when I'm 99.99% or 99 % sure they're clean. It doesn't make sense. That's not a preference for cleaner hands, or more locked doors. It's, gasp, crazy.
Not to mention some of this behaviour is binary, like locking doors or turning on lights. No matter how many times I flip a switch or turn a lock, if it's odd, it'll be locked/on, and if it's even, it'll be unlocked/off. I just don't think most OCD behaviour actually follows patterns that "additional certainty" would predict.
Hey, take it up with pjeby if you think you understand the issue better, it's well beyond my pay grade at this point. He linked to a peer-reviewed paper substantiating the certainty thesis.
You should at least consider the possibility that OCDers really do just need to be more sure, and the number-based rituals are simply the result of them having noticed that that number comforted them in the past, and then cargo-cultishly inferring that the number is somehow special.