Frost, Randy O. And Steketee, Gail (2010) Stuff: compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010.
This is possibly the best book ever written about the problem of compulsive hoarding (also known as cluttering), a problem which I believe is associated with the autistic spectrum and also hyperthymestic syndrome, although I am not sure if any of these conditions are mentioned in this book. This is a fascinating book about a many-faceted and little-understood but potentially most troublesome personal problem, which is possibly related to OCD and to shopping addiction. Both authors are professors who have studied hoarding and OCD, and interesting and detailed case studies are featured from their work.
Andy Warhol is one famous autistic collector of prodigious amounts of stuff who is discussed in this book, as is Sherlock Holmes, a famous autistic fictional character who hated discarding documents.
Why do people hoard? Executive dysfunction causing an inability to make sensible decisions about possessions? Or is the problem some type of excess of some mental process? Is it a type of addiction? Or is it art? Is it an unpleasant side-effect of an interest or an obsession? Is it simply a consequence of increasing land values and smaller dwellings, or social inequity? Or is pleasure at the heart of this problem? Do these people simply love objects more than they love people, who are displaced from the homes that are filled with possessions? Or do these people love objects as if they are people? Are these people unable to discard objects because they wish to avoid negative emotions associated with loss? Is anxiety the heart of this problem? Is hoarding an excessive reaction to past material deprivations? Or is it a reaction to unrecognized emotional deprivations in the present? Or could hoarding be a side effect of some issue to do with a sense of self, of personal identity? Do these people feel that their personal identity is held within their possessions? Is it all about accessing memories using objects as triggers for the retrieval of old memories that might not otherwise be accessible (links to hyperthymestic syndrome and synesthesia seem very relevant here)? Are hoarders simply suckers for an out of control consumer culture? Or is it an impulse-control disorder? Or do hoarders have minds that process the aesthetic and physical qualities of objects differently to the way regular people think? Or could it be a manifestation of a type of mental inflexibility or stubbornness? Once a decision has been made to collect items, is it really the idea of collecting or saving that hoarders cannot let go of? I’ve no idea what the answer is, but I can tell you for sure this book looks at this complex issue from many different angles.
Does the abundance of explanations for hoarding in this book constitute a form of hoarding? Do the authors need help? Is this book review getting a bit excessive? Do I have a problem? The great thing about blogging and the internet is that one can dump a complex abundance of text and stuff and ideas into a blog, onto the great, vast, endless internet. If I weren't doing this I could be stuck with a house full of junk, who knows?
Perhaps hoarding is becoming a more high-profile problem. I have noticed that an Australian celebrity, comedian Corinne Grant has recently released a book about her hoarding. I have yet to read that book.
Stuff: compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things book excerpt and radio interview on NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=126386317
New York Times book review
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/books/review/Kramer-t.html
Salon book review
http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2010/04/25/hoarding_interview_stuff
Details of Corinne Grant’s book:
Lessons in letting go: confessions of a hoarder. Allen and Unwin, 2010.
Interviewed on radio show Life Matters:
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2010/3020034.htm
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10 comments:
I love this post! I don't think you left any questions behind. :-)
I've never heard about hoarding being correlated with ASDs. I am the opposite of a hoarder. I am a de-clutterer. I can't stand clutter. It interrupts my visual field and feels overwhelming.
My NT husband, while not a hoarder, is more of a "saver" than I am, as in "You just never know when these empty yogurt containers will come in handy" or "They had a sale this month on soy powder, so I bought a case." My feeling is that if I need something someday, I can buy it then, and if I can't find it, I'll do without it. The only exception I make is with medicine, first aid stuff, and certain food staples, which I'd rather have on hand ahead of time.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is a hoarder.
At least, she is a collector of soaps and things to eat.
It was because of her upbringing in East Germany.
I believe there is a link between hoarding and the spectrum from personal experience (I keep some collections but I don't count myself as a hoarder, but I know autists who are). There are also quite a few details in the case studies in this book that seem to point towards autism or some other type of brain difference. I recall there is one bit in the book where they say there's a genetic like between hoardnig and Tourette's.
Like you I hate to look at clutter. I try to keep my stuff looking orderly and neat. Some people seem to not notice visual chaos.
Darn, these comments come out in the wrong order. My last comment was in response to Rachel.
Adelaide, your comment is interesting. I think there could be a difference between the explanations that hoarders might give to explain their habit, and the real reasons for the hoarding.
I sometimes watch a show "Hoarders" they have here. I just can't understand why people do it. I also hate clutter, and my attitude towards housekeeping is, "I don't like cleaning up messes, therefore, I try not to make any messes." My place is very neat, with everything in its place so I know where it is, but I seldom do any housecleaning. A little dust doesn't bother me.
I don't think we've had that TV show here in Australia on free TV. I have seen stories about hoarding on current affairs TV shows and also a series about gross clean-up jobs in New York (not sure what it was called).
According to some stuff that I have read about hoarding, some experts make a distinction between people who hoard stuff that is regarded as rubbish, such as perishables and newspapers, and other people who hoard stuff that has any market value, with the former group being diagnosed as OCD, and the latter group labelled as hoarders or clutterers. I don't think the book that I reviewed made this distinction, but I think it's an importnat one because one makes a much worse mess than the other type.
Its hard to tell where the difference is between hoarding and being a private collector or a private archivist or a curator of a private museum or an owner of a private library. I keep books that are of interest and I know are no longer easy to access thru public libraries. Not long ago I saw a poster asking the public if they can help some major library with old newspapers that they don't stock. Why didn't the library keep this stuff?
When you listed the questions, I recognise [at least] three factors in my own hoarding/saving behaviour:
* memories
* impulse control
* emotional deprivation
Along with one form of hoarding making the worse mess, that form could well affect the public.
Do saved objects evoke memories in a particularly striking way, Adelaide?
There are papers and folders that to this day have the power to make my legs shake, whenever I touch them.
So, yes, this is a "body memory".
For example, there was my history cover which I recovered from a box yesterday.
That paper made me feel happy. There was also some work on Egypt and Greece.
But there was also a picture of a fern done in black and white. I had no feeling for that fern.
That sounds like something really out of the ordinary.
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