Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B003Z8VVXE | Format: EPUB
Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things Description
What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper thats ever come into his home? What compulsions drive a woman like Irene, whose hoarding cost her her marriage? Or Ralph, whose imagined uses for castoff items like leaky old buckets almost lost him his house?
Randy Frost and Gail Steketee were the first to study hoarding when they began their work a decade ago; they expected to find a few sufferers but ended up treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls from the families of others. Now they explore the compulsion through a series of compelling case studies in the vein of Oliver Sacks.
With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a hoarder - piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails, vast piles of paper that the hoarders churn but never discard, even collections of animals and garbage - Frost and Steketee illuminate the pull that possessions exert on all of us.
Whether we're savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, very few of us are in fact free of the impulses that drive hoarders to the extremes in which they live. For all of us with complicated relationships to our things, Stuff answers the question of what happens when our stuff starts to own us.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 9 hours and 8 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Audible, Inc.
- Audible.com Release Date: August 10, 2010
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003Z8VVXE
Stuff is first and foremost about hoarders-people who keep so much stuff in their homes that it negatively affects their lives- but it is also about all of us. Stuff forces its readers to look at themselves and wonder: why do I have all this stuff?
I agreed to read Stuff because hoarding fascinates me, and my family has had some experience with it. My husband's grandfather kept a very cluttered house, eventually filling an entire pole barn full of items from yard sales and the trash. Going through his items after his death was excruciating, and it was difficult to understand why he kept a broken rake, toy cars with only two wheels, and Tiffany lamps all together.
According to the book, my husband's family is not alone. In fact, SIX MILLION Americans suffer from hoarding, and only recently are doctors beginning to understand its complications. It is a bizarre combination of nature and nuture-both genes and family conditions have been identified as factors. I had the misconception that most hoarders were elderly, and that the Great Depression had led to their condition. Frost and Steketee quickly addressed this false logic by explaining that in their research most hoarders have never experienced a period of extreme need or want.
Instead, they argue, most of them had a childhood of extreme disconnect/isolation from their parents. Their "recent research indicates that an absence of warmth, acceptance, and support characterizes the early family life of many hoarders, perhaps leading them to form strong emotional attachments to possessions." Therefore, as children they learned to become attached to objects rather than people.
Still, I was amazed to learn that there are a variety of reasons why hoarders keep these items.
E. L. Doctorow's recent novel, "Homer and Langley," focuses on the tragic case of the Collyer brothers. These two eccentrics "lived in a three-story, twelve-room brownstone in a once fashionable section of Harlem." The police who broke into the brothers' home were faced with a staggering sight. "The house was packed with junk--newspapers, tin cans, magazines, umbrellas, old stoves, pipes, books, and much more." Apparently, Homer died from a heart attack brought about by starvation, and Langley was crushed by a huge number of baled-up newspapers that fell on him. More than 170 tons of junk was ultimately removed from the house of these once wealthy siblings, and the Collyer brothers became the stuff of legend. How and why did this tragedy occur?
Randy O. Frost , a professor of psychology, and Gail Steketee, a professor of social work, are both experts on obsessive-compulsive spectrum disorders and have studied hoarding for years. In "Stuff," they discuss compulsive hoarding--what it is, who suffers from it, and what can be done about it. In the prologue, the authors mention that Dante created a place in hell for those who hoard and for those who waste. The poet said, "You need no words of mine to grasp their plight." Indeed, for those who cannot throw anything away, life can quickly become hellish for them and their families.
Between two and five percent of Americans are compulsive hoarders. Everyone knows someone who suffers from this syndrome. It could be a friend, neighbor, someone's husband or wife, or even a child whose unhealthy attachment to things interferes with his or her ability to live normally. This problem afflicts men and women, rich and poor, young and old. Not everyone hoards in the same way.
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