If Frost and Steketee have difficulty constructing a coherent new vision of compulsive hoarding, it is because they are too observant and too dedicated to the relief of suffering to make a complex phenomenon simple. They are collectors in their own right, stocking a cabinet of curiosities with intimate stories and evocative theories. To those who need to understand hoarders, perhaps in their own family, “Stuff” offers perspective. For general readers, it is likely to provide useful stimulus for examining how we form and justify our own attachments to objects.
salon and frost:
Shows like "Hoarders" and "Hoarding: Buried Alive" have given hoarding a higher profile. Why do you think these shows have so much appeal?
If you go into a hoarder's home with a crew of people who are designed to throw stuff out, you’re going to see crisis. You’re going to see someone experiencing a trauma. It’s not like other reality TV shows where people take on this persona and they act differently in front of the camera than they would otherwise. These people are under the control of their possessions, they’re locked in, and so they react this way because they can’t react any other way.
There's also an appeal because, on the one hand, hoarding seems bizarre to us, but on the other hand, it’s a reflection of something that all of us have with respect to our possessions. They're exaggerated versions of us.
Do you think these shows are exploitative?
If you spend one weekend with someone with a camera crew, a cleaning crew and no therapy, you’re making some educational contribution by showing people what hoarding is -- and that it’s really an illness -- but it gives the impression that what you should do with someone who has this type of problem is bring in a cleaning crew and start pressuring them. But if you do that when the person isn't ready, the home will be back to its original state, or even worse, in short order.
You can’t change this behavior in TV time; it’s a long-term process. But that's not as dramatic as when you’ve got a burly cleaning crew throwing out someone’s prized collection of 10-year-old newspapers. In our treatment, we start with having somebody throw out a single item, and the purpose of the treatment is not to clear the clutter, the purpose is to change the behavior and to change the nature of these people's attachments to possessions. Once those things change, then the clutter will be easier to deal with.
Different cultures have different attitudes toward objects. Can we blame hoarding behavior on American materialism?
I think it might make it worse, but it’s clearly not a major component. If you take someone who's highly materialistic, who buys cars as a part of their identity, these are outward signs to the world saying, "This is who I am." In hoarding, the interest is not to show the world who you are, but to experience the objects. Though I suspect that any culture that has a large number of inexpensive and accessible objects is probably going to be one where there’s more hoarding.
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- bill 4-25-2010 7:03 pm
salon and frost:
Shows like "Hoarders" and "Hoarding: Buried Alive" have given hoarding a higher profile. Why do you think these shows have so much appeal?
If you go into a hoarder's home with a crew of people who are designed to throw stuff out, you’re going to see crisis. You’re going to see someone experiencing a trauma. It’s not like other reality TV shows where people take on this persona and they act differently in front of the camera than they would otherwise. These people are under the control of their possessions, they’re locked in, and so they react this way because they can’t react any other way.
There's also an appeal because, on the one hand, hoarding seems bizarre to us, but on the other hand, it’s a reflection of something that all of us have with respect to our possessions. They're exaggerated versions of us.
Do you think these shows are exploitative?
If you spend one weekend with someone with a camera crew, a cleaning crew and no therapy, you’re making some educational contribution by showing people what hoarding is -- and that it’s really an illness -- but it gives the impression that what you should do with someone who has this type of problem is bring in a cleaning crew and start pressuring them. But if you do that when the person isn't ready, the home will be back to its original state, or even worse, in short order.
You can’t change this behavior in TV time; it’s a long-term process. But that's not as dramatic as when you’ve got a burly cleaning crew throwing out someone’s prized collection of 10-year-old newspapers. In our treatment, we start with having somebody throw out a single item, and the purpose of the treatment is not to clear the clutter, the purpose is to change the behavior and to change the nature of these people's attachments to possessions. Once those things change, then the clutter will be easier to deal with.
Different cultures have different attitudes toward objects. Can we blame hoarding behavior on American materialism?
I think it might make it worse, but it’s clearly not a major component. If you take someone who's highly materialistic, who buys cars as a part of their identity, these are outward signs to the world saying, "This is who I am." In hoarding, the interest is not to show the world who you are, but to experience the objects. Though I suspect that any culture that has a large number of inexpensive and accessible objects is probably going to be one where there’s more hoarding.
- bill 4-28-2010 9:01 pm [add a comment]