In the end of five years I made supplication to the king to go out of this land, desiring to see my poor wife and children according to conscience and nature.
Obsessional does not necessarily mean sexual obsession, not even obsession for this, or for that in particular; to be an obsessional means to find oneself caught in a mechanism, in a trap increasingly demanding and endless.
The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever.