Collecting Or Compulsive Hoarding Syndrome?
01.18.07 By Deanna DahlsadLast night on ABC’s Medical Mysteries there was a story on hoarders, folks who have so much junk in their homes they cannot live in them. While I’m not saying that all collectors are so afflicted, there were some really interesting points about the brains of these people that I thought were relevant to us.
Dr. David Tolin, the director of the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Institute of Living in Hartford, Conn., has devoted his career to studying what goes on inside the mind of a hoarder and he believes that such hoarding, currently considered a subset of obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, really may be a unique disorder completely separate from OCD.
Included in Tolin’s work, and the TV show, were brain scans of hoarders taken during the process of decision making and even loss of their objects. While hooked up to a brain-scan machine hoarders are asked to look at pieces of their clutter, such as mail and coupons, and then decide whether to save them or throw them out. When they decided to toss things, they then had to watch it get shredded. (I can only imagine!)
At this point, two parts of a hoarder’s brain become active, each at odds with one another. The brain’s hippocampus “actively searches for memories about the object.” While most people don’t think about objects too much — they just let their orbitofrontal cortex make a decision — the hoarder thinks about the object, why they saved it, memories of getting the object, etc.
As a collector, I feel this way about most of my objects. I remember the funny little shop I bought it in, the sweater the lady who rung up the sale was wearing, where I first placed it when I came home, and nearly every place that object has been in my homes.
This ‘war’ between the two parts of the brain, rational decision making vs. memory, is comparable to punishment, according to Tolin. “When the person is trying to make a decision about what to throw away, it seems that the person who is hoarding, is processing this activity as if it is deeply punishing,” he said. “The person who hoards is going through a very, very effortful search of their memory to try to think of as many things as they can about this item before they make the decision. What this all amounts to then is a painful and effortful process of decision-making, that you and I might take for granted.”
Dr. Randy Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College in Massachussetts, says, “One of the things we know about hoarding is that the beliefs people have about their possessions are so powerful, that it’s very difficult for them to get out of this behavior.” Now isn’t that the truth. My beliefs about my possessions are powerful… Just try and take that item out of my hands at a flea market — I double-dog-dare-you!
Gee, if I understand this — relate to it even — does that mean I have it? …But wait, just like with Ginsu Knives there’s more!
The hippocampus not only plays a part in memory, but in spatial navigation too. This is why hoarders (and I) don’t need to make nice neat stacks of orderly organization. We don’t have all our magazines in one pile, our bills in another, and a third for our tax forms because we don’t need to rely on neatness to find our stuff.
We know that our November issue of Fine Books & Collections is on that stack on the left, under the fuzzy duck bank, about half-way down, just under the folder with our tax forms. We can see it there. We can produce it anytime we like.
And I can tell you just how it got there — along with the duck bank and how and where I bought him…
If hoarding is a real syndrome, I just may have to call in sick tomorrow.
Tolin and Frost have co-authored “Buried in Treasures,” a self-help book about compulsive hoarding syndrome which I’m sure mom will buy me after she reads this.
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January 18th, 2007 at 6:07 am
I have to say that I’m often concerned about having something like this myself! Every damaged, half-dead book I see is a future project, everything MIGHT have a purpose. I’ve recently been cleaning out my closets and only yesterday defined my toy collecting as ‘compulsive’ - instead of really collecting things I loved, I collected everything I loved, everythings tangentially related to those things, and then those things kinda related to those things.
I try to define what I keep vs. what I throw away by imagining what I’ll miss or what I re-acquire someday. Of course, this definition will change every few days, but it keeps me from compulsively acquiring things every second. The internet and a credit card were murder to my resolve, though.
But lately, while cleaning out those closets, I realized that I don’t even LIKE those first three Star Wars movies, and unless it’s a cool alien, everything’s gone on eBay. Some things are worth nothing after hiding in the closet for 5 years, and some things have become unusually rare and valuable! Of course, the first 100 bucks made after selling off the excess toys was spent on… toys. But smaller, cooler ones.
I’m sure I’ll love them for at least 6 months before they go back on eBay.
January 18th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
“She also has a weakness for printed matter, and so ephemera and books are hoarded in quantities too large to be called ‘collections’.”
I’m just quoting your bio on the site.
January 18th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Ouch, nashbabe, that hurts :p
Seriously, as they say on Grey’s Anatomy, I really wonder where collecting ends and mental illness begins — it must be a pretty fine line…
I admit that like Collin, I can and do prune, even if only for cash to buy more ‘junk’ — so if I can part with it, I should be OK, right? …But then there’s that visual thingy. That’s what really made me wonder… if that’s how I’ve seen my whole life, how I’ve found everything that a roommate, spouse or child has misplaced… Is this a gift or a syndrome?
(And nash, do tell… how close are you to a brain-scan which lights up in 2 places?)
January 20th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
[...] And I realize that to a vast majority of the population, all of these look exactly the same, and they’re not entirely incorrect. Deanna recently spoke about hoarding items, and the possibility of a biological or genetic reason for some of our collecting compulsions. I think that for collectors, the idea of accumulating a ‘critical mass’ can be a quiet, unarticulated, but dominant urge. Either the idea that possessing every last something-or-other will create some kind of perfection, or creating a perfect balance in a display in a seamlessly-meshing sea of items - these are the impulses that drive a lot of my collecting. [...]
February 1st, 2007 at 2:24 pm
FYI, TLC is looking for compulsive hoarders…
February 12th, 2007 at 2:18 am
[...] I may be, in fact, a hoarder so you might think I am rationalizing yet another collection but I do have periods of intense organization. These periods involve touching nearly every single thing I own and finding it a home — not just a place to put it, but a home. One of the most practical means of doing this is via suitcases. [...]
July 19th, 2007 at 4:35 am
[...] You know that I (as a hoarder, preserver of boxes, and mutant toy collector) agree with the Kovels. Don’t throw that out! [...]
October 4th, 2007 at 6:48 am
[...] You know by now that I’m not just a collector, not just a lover of stuff, but a hoarder — but there is one act of collecting I do not like: When a group of objects is rounded up for the sole intent of being removed from society. [...]
April 14th, 2008 at 5:20 am
[...] contacted Collin regarding a psychology course assignment on collecting and hoarding. Since Collin and I had just been discussing this very subject, Collin directed Steven to contact [...]