What is the relationship between...

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... obsessiveness and conscientiousness.

In religious conservatives, a very romantic one. They obsess with morals so they won't feel guilty.

Being conscientious means showing up at a work on time every day.

Being obsessive means feeding thirty cats at your house for so many years that the neighbors get a court order to evict you from the nieghborhood.

Even if your obsessive in a lucrative job related way it doesnt necessarily have anything to do with being conscientious.

You may be obsessive about computer programming or something in your office, but you're not conscientious about brushing your teeth every day, or about changing the oil in your car to get to work.

The two traits have little to do with each other.

Consciensious just means thorough and implies an end result. But obsessive means compulsiveness with no real end in sight? Maybe?

Conscientiousness is a dimension of personality in the Five Factor model, including planfulness, tidiness, achievement striving/work ethic, thoroughness, etc. Obsessive-compulsive personality disorder takes conscientiousness to a dysfunctional extreme.

to be obsesive is to realy want things to go a certain way and to go to great lenghts to get them to go that way to be conscientious means that you kinda have an idea of how things to got and try to stear it that way but if it's not the time for thins like that its not time. i usualy don't trowh trash on the street but if i'm with a group of people and where in a hurry and it's something i can't keep on me i will trowh it on the street. thats a way of discribing the difference not the actual difference. the relationship is that its both a way of acting that is concerned with the way things go you could even go as far as saying that conciensiusnis is the love king of obsesivnis and obsesivenis self the fear kind although this comparison wil not hold in all forms of obsesiveniss

Some years ago- the story as so awful that Ive forgetten the details- but some young NBA star got charged with negligent homicide or something like that.

He become so engrossed with his World of Warcraft game (or some such thing) tha the ignored his toddler for dozens of hours on end and never feed the child or anything.

The point being that by becoming so pathologically engrossed in the computer game he was "obsessed", but he was hardly being "conscientous".

Aristotle taught in the Nichomachian Ethics that any virtue extended too far becomes a vice.

ruveyn

The Op's choice of words is baffling to me because to me the two words are not even comparable.
"Conscientiousness" implies a sense of duty,but it does not imply passion.

'Dedication" or "devotion" are more comparable to "obsession" because they imply passion.

Being dedicated to a craft or to a cause or to any kind of goal is a virtue.

Obsession is the darker twin of dedication (or devotion) - a fixation on something that takes over you and controls you. Though obsession can end up being positive if its channeled right it can be a destructive vice- akin to addiction.

Is it just me? I mean, I guess conscientiousness has the implication of self-directed self-control whereas obsessiveness tends to emphasize succumbing to anxiety rather than self-control, so that might be a difference. Worries over self-control, however, can lead to obsessiveness (introspection tells me that this is the case in my case).

conscientious - good - A healthy level of thinking about something. Conscientiousness benefits the one who is conscientious and the object of that person's conscientiousness.

obsessive - bad - an unhealthy level of thinking about something. Being obsessive is sometimes damaging to the object of the obsession, and always damaging (directly or indirectly) to the person who is obsessing.

I think the answer to your quest lies in the definitions you have just posted "When taken to an extreme, they may also be "workaholics", perfectionists, and compulsive in their behavior"

In other words the two are separated by degree, much like the autism spectrum, with individuals the behaviours exhibited tend to blur across the various lines of definition, so the label that appears the most appropriate is attached.