Stuff

by Gail Steketee

  The third major theme identified by Furby was that possessions become part of an individual's sense of self, just as Sartre believed. This kind of attachment can be subtle yet powerful. Objects can increase one's sense of status or power and expand one's potential: my purchase of a piano provides me with the potential to become a pianist, thereby expanding my identity. Objects can also maintain identity by preserving personal history. Most people save mementos of their personal past. These mementos become repositories for the sensations, thoughts, and emotions present during earlier experiences, promoting sensations such as the rush of nostalgia that can accompany hearing a song or smelling a scent from the past.

  Collecting

  People collect and save objects as a hobby in virtually all cultures. The earliest documented evidence of collecting comes from excavations of the Persian tombs at Ur in what is now Iraq. A collection of eleven hundred seal impressions on lumps of clay found there date to the fifth century B.C.E. In contemporary society, of course, many people collect objects of various types, from antique cars to matchboxes. By one estimate, one-third of adults in the United States collect something, and two-thirds of all households have at least one collector in residence. Some people collect odd items, such as empty cigarette packs or coffee cans, and people join together as societies dedicated to certain kinds of collecting, from the American Philatelic Society (stamps) to the more unusual Victorian Button Collectors Club. In contrast to the very limited science about hoarding, research on collecting has a long history, mostly from the perspective of sociology, anthropology, and the economics of consumer behavior.

  Exactly what makes something a collection or someone a collector is elusive. Virtually anything can be and has been collected, from stamps to swizzle sticks. But just how many swizzle sticks does it take to make a collection? Most scholars who study collecting seem to agree that a collection must be a set of objects, meaning more than one, and that the items must be related in some way—they must have some kind of cohesive theme. They also must be actively acquired, meaning there must be some kind of passion or fire to seek out and obtain them. Someone who simply receives gifts that otherwise fit the definition is not a collector.

  The process of collecting can be quite elaborate. Some sociologists liken it to a courtship in which the collector spends considerable time planning the hunt for an object and anticipating the moment of acquisition. The objects in the collection, once acquired, must be removed from their typical use. This feature was made abundantly clear to me in college when I visited a friend's dorm room and sat down next to a pile of Marvel Comics still in their wrappers. I pulled one out and started reading it, only to be physically assaulted when my friend's roommate arrived and saw what I was doing. They were, he informed me in no uncertain terms, not meant to be read! Another feature of collecting is that the objects are organized in some way. In one of our first studies, we visited a woman who described herself as a pack rat, but most of her home was spotless and not only uncluttered but almost empty. In her basement, however, she had every newspaper clipping about the British royal family from every major newspaper in the United States. Boxes of these clippings were stacked to the ceiling and arranged in rows by year and family member.

  The key features that define a collection seem to be that it involves more than one thing, the things have to be related somehow, and the things have to be acquired and organized in a certain way. That means the dozen pens and pencils in my desk drawer are not a collection because I simply dump them there whenever I find myself with another writing implement, and when I need to, I use them. But if I actively sought them out and acquired them, carefully organized them, and never or rarely used them (and didn't allow anyone else to use them either), they could be a collection. A collector, then, is anyone who has a collection.

  Collectors come in all types and ages. Researchers in the field say that nearly all children collect things, sometimes beginning as early as age three. Not coincidentally, it is at that time that children begin to understand possessive pronouns such as "mine" and "yours." Interestingly, children's use of the word "mine" seems to occur before their use of the word "yours," usually between the ages of two and two and a half. When "yours" first enters the vocabulary, it is often in an attempt to convince someone that they already have something and should not pursue "mine."

  In general, the knowledge that someone can own something reflects a sophisticated self-understanding. Children's first use of "mine" is frequently associated with physical aggression to get or retain a possession, but early use of possessive pronouns is also associated with more sharing behavior later on. Most children younger than two don't have a clear understanding of ownership.*

  Passionate collectors spend a great deal of time doing things related to their collections. Exactly what they do has been a subject of interest to scholars studying collecting. According to some scholars, collectors follow a series of steps in collecting. The first of these is setting a goal of what to collect. Once this decision has been made, planning for the acquisition begins. A byproduct of the planning process is fantasizing about the object. The fantasies increase the object's subjective value and give it a magical quality, and soon the value of the object outstrips and becomes disconnected from any functional utility it may have. Next comes the hunt, frequently the most pleasurable part of collecting. Many collectors shift from a self-focused state to what some have described as a "flow state," a mental state in which the person is so absorbed in the activity that he or she is unaware of his or her surroundings—commonly experienced by an athlete at the height of physical exertion or by someone immersed in a game or project.

  Watching a passionate collector at a flea market makes it clear that his or her state of consciousness is altered during "the hunt." The person has little appreciation for anything going on around him or her; only the pursuit matters. When the acquisition occurs, it is accompanied by a wave of euphoria and appreciation of the object's features, which become part of the "story" of the acquisition. Finally, the excited collector catalogs the object and adds it to the collection, arranging for its display. Often subtle rituals accompany newly acquired objects. For instance, Freud used to place new acquisitions on his dining room table so that he could admire them while he ate.

  Some people collect out of a desire for an aesthetic, others for prestige, and still others for a sense of mastery. But most theories of collecting elaborate on attempts to define, protect, or enhance the self. This is borne out by people's reactions to losing things to natural disasters or thievery. Most burglary victims feel that they have been violated, and many women liken it to being raped.

  Anthropologists have described cultural practices in which people connect themselves to objects by licking or touching them. Likewise, the grieving in some cultures over the possessions of a deceased loved one demonstrates the extent to which a possession can be considered an extension of personal identity. This is the same phenomenon we observed with my students and Jerry Seinfeld's shirt. The connection between the object and its former owner transcends rationality. It is symbolic and magical.

  Many collectors think of their collections as a legacy to pass on to their heirs or even the world. Some, especially art collectors and collectors of historical artifacts, donate their collections to museums or create their own museums for posterity. This has led some scholars to suggest that collecting is a way of managing fears about death by creating a form of immortality. This is consistent with a popular theory in social psychology called the terror management theory (TMT). TMT grows out of an existential predicament—that people, like animals, are mortal. But unlike animals, we are aware of our own mortality. Knowledge of the inevitability of death and its unpredictability can produce paralyzing fear. To cope with this potential terror, cultures provide beliefs, rituals, and sanctioned strategies for managing it. One of these strategies is the belief that some part of ourselves can live on after we die. Producing or amassing something of value is one way to accom
plish this. Thus a collection offers the potential for immortality.

  Quite a different theory of collecting relates to how people evaluate their self-worth. The compensation theory suggests that people who question their self-worth need evidence to reassure themselves of their value and importance. Physical objects provide clear and tangible verification of mastery over the world. The feedback boosts the collector's self-esteem and contributes to a positive self-image. William Randolph Hearst, founder of the Hearst publishing empire (and the model for the title character in the movie Citizen Kane), accumulated a vast collection of tapestries, paintings, sculptures, furniture, coins, and much more. He used some of the items to furnish his palatial home, but the majority filled warehouses throughout the country. Perhaps his collecting provided him with much-needed evidence of his mastery over the world. (Many of these collections are now on display at the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.)

  Some collectors show extreme behaviors that straddle the border between eccentricity and pathology. Andy Warhol, an artist, filmmaker, photographer, and celebrity, is credited with the development of pop art, a movement in which art reflected the popular culture of the time. Warhol's paintings of brand-name products such as Campbell's soup and Coca-Cola were re-creations of the culture, ways of preserving not the exceptional but the mundane. He was also an avid collector and spent part of every day shopping at flea markets, antique stores, auction houses, and galleries—anywhere he might find something of interest. He collected not only fine art of every style and period but also what many considered junk. Like other famous collectors, Warhol displayed little of what he bought and tucked most of it away in warehouses. Still, his five-story house in New York City was so crammed that he could live in only two of the rooms. According to Stuart Pivar, a frequent shopping companion, Warhol had a plan to sell at least part of his collection, but he was still in the acquiring phase of this plan when he died at age fifty-eight. Whether he would ever have gotten past this phase is questionable. He once gave an antique shop a Mexican ceremonial mask to sell but then retrieved it out of fear that it would in fact be sold.

  One of the most unusual aspects of Warhol's collecting became apparent shortly before his death. During the 1970s and 1980s, Warhol preserved nearly every bit of ephemera that came into his possession. He kept a cardboard box beside his desk, and when the impulse struck him, he cleared everything off his desk and into the box, no exceptions. Valuable prints, cash, and apple cores all went into what he described as his "time capsule." He dated it and stored it along with more than six hundred others. About one hundred of his time capsules have been opened so far. There seems no discrimination regarding what went into each one—an electric bill, silverware from a trip on an airplane, telephone messages, large sums of cash; whatever was in his life at that moment was swept into the box. Warhol's time capsules have become a pop culture archaeologist's dream. They are a record of Warhol's life in all its detail and triviality—as perfect a record as could be had. Material from the time capsules has been displayed in museums around the world. In this way, Warhol has become immortal.

  Warhol was not the first to collect such seemingly unrelated objects in one container. Common in Europe during the sixteenth century were "cabinets of curiosities," or German Wunderkammers —jumbled collections of strange, wonderful, rare, and curious objects designed to create a picture, if not a wholly representative one, of the world at the time. Cabinets of curiosities were the precursors of early museums, filled with whatever the collector found interesting. Warhol certainly followed in this tradition, but he found everything interesting. His definition of art was all-encompassing, from the Jasper Johns painting he found at a flea market to the plastic trinket he bought at the same time. For Warhol, even the process of collecting seemed to be a form of art. Judging by the interest generated by his time capsules, many share this view.

  Hoarding

  Is such a passion for collecting pathological? It hardly matters how much stuff anyone owns as long as it doesn't interfere with his or her health or happiness or that of others. But when it does, the result can be dramatic, as was the case with the Collyer brothers and with Irene. Distress or impairment constitutes the boundary between normal collecting and hoarding. Many of the people we see experience great distress because of their hoarding. Acquiring and saving things has wrecked them financially and socially, driven their families away, and impaired their ability to carry out basic activities of living. In some cases, neighbors' and family members' lives have been impaired as well. Hoarding is not defined by the number of possessions, but by how the acquisition and management of those possessions affects their owner. When hoarding causes distress or impairs one's ability to perform basic functions, it has crossed the line into pathology.

  Defining hoarding this way means that people with smaller living spaces and those without the resources to rent storage space may be at greater risk for developing a hoarding problem. In our experience, however, people with hoarding problems fill the space they are living in regardless of the size or number of storage units they have. We have seen clients who own four or five houses. When they fill one house, they move to another and fill it in short order. Then they move on to the next one. The more space they have available, the more space they fill. Perhaps this is actually the goal—to fill space.

  The edges of hoarding are not always clear. Excessive clutter is the hallmark of hoarding and the feature most likely to cause distress and interference. But definitions of what constitutes clutter vary widely. We once received a referral from a psychiatrist shortly after he read a newspaper story about our research. He was treating someone with a severe hoarding problem and thought the man would be a good candidate for our research. When the patient called us, he complained that his hoarding was so bad that his wife had left him. We braced ourselves when we approached his house, but when we got inside, it was as neat as a pin except for two piles—one under the dining room table and one behind a chair in the living room. We assumed that he had miraculously cleared his home, but he said that this was as bad as it had ever been. He complained bitterly about the clutter, insisting that it had resulted in his wife's departure. Apparently, he had convinced his psychiatrist, who had never been to his home, that hoarding was his problem. It was clear to us that he had no hoarding problem, but rather needed an explanation for why his wife had left. After a few minutes with him, it became apparent that his temper, rigidity, and controlling behavior were more likely explanations for his wife's departure. Clearly, his understanding of the word "clutter" differed from ours, a common occurrence when we talk with people about what we study.

  To make sure we had an accurate way to assess clutter, we set out to develop a nonverbal measure that did not rely on the word. We tried photographing my lab filled with stuff, but it just didn't look right. Piles of newspapers, clothes, boxes, bags, and other things I had brought from home looked out of place in the laboratory. I asked the students in my senior seminar if they would help. As a class project and with money from Gail's university, we rented a college-owned apartment and set about filling it with stuff. We planned to take pictures of each room at various levels of clutter. The students enjoyed filling the apartment with newspapers, magazines, clothes, and things otherwise destined for the dumpster.

  We got permission to borrow couches and chairs from the psychology department lounge to furnish the apartment. Unfortunately, word of that permission did not reach campus security. The class met in the evening, and after class one night, we removed the lounge furniture and put it on top of my car. It was nearly midnight by the time we got it to the apartment and unloaded. When I got home, my telephone was ringing. It was a campus security officer informing me that security had had a report that my students had stolen furniture out of the psychology lounge. I explained that I had orchestrated the removal, not my students, and that we had permission from the department chair. He did not accept my explanation, nor did he see the humor in the situation. He inf
ormed me that I would have to return the furniture immediately, or he would file charges against me and the students. One of the benefits of working at a small college is that you get to know most of the people working there. Campus security reported to the director of facilities, who happened to be a friend of mine. Luckily, he had a sense of humor when I called him at 1:00 A.M. and explained my problem. He made a phone call, and we didn't get arrested.

  We focused on three rooms—the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom. Our plan was to fill each room nearly to the ceiling and take photographs as we uncluttered the space. To make the job easier, we started with several layers of empty copy paper boxes. On top of these we put the stuff accumulated by the students. As we removed the boxes, the top layer remained roughly the same for each photo. This allowed us to create a series of photographs from Collyer-like to clutter-free for each room. We ran into a problem trying to remove boxes from the room, so we "buried" a student in the midst of the clutter near the back of the room. When we were ready to set up the next picture, she popped up and took out some of the boxes from underneath the clutter. I wondered whether her parents would have thought her tuition was well spent on a class in which the professor buried her under a mountain of clutter.