Reviews for Stuff : compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things
Publishers Weekly
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Amassing stuff is normal in our materialistic culture, but for millions it reaches unhealthy levels, according to the authors of this eye-opening study of the causes of hoarding, its meaning for the hoarder, and its impact on their families. Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College, and Steketee, dean of the social work school at Brown, gather much anecdotal material from conversations with extreme hoarders and find that for such people, "intense emotional meaning is attached to so many of their possessions. even trash." For some, this meaning inheres in animals: one interviewee has 200 cats. The effects of hoarding on the hoarder's spouse, parents, and children can be severe, the authors find. Frost and Steketee write with real sympathy and appreciation for hoarders, and their research indicates "an absence of warmth, acceptance, and support" during many hoarders' early years. They even speculate that a hoarder's "attention to the details of objects" may indicate "a special form of creativity and appreciation for the aesthetics of everyday things." This succinct, illuminating book will prove helpful to hoarders, their families, and mental health professionals who work with them. (Apr. 20) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Choice
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Hoarding, classified as a mental illness when it seriously interferes with one's ability to live, affects some two to five percent of the US population. Replete with fascinating insights, this study by Frost (Smith College) and Steketee (Boston Univ.) is the culmination of some 15 years of extensive, painstaking research with victims of this distressing condition. Hoarders seem to have heightened sensitivity to a myriad of minute aesthetic details about the objects they collect and about the memories associated with them--so much so that they experience everything as having equal value and interest. As a result they have great difficulty in classifying their possessions and become paralyzed by indecision when it comes to letting anything go. Unlike people with obsessive-compulsive disorder, hoarders often experience intense pleasure in the acquisition of things, and are momentarily oblivious to the deleterious cumulative effects of these short-term satisfactions. The authors teach hoarders how to get through the imagined pain of loss and to practice "acquisition-less" excursions (force never works). This is an exemplary, lucid, and humane account of disturbed minds, written with narrative skill comparable to that of Oliver Sacks, whose books include Musicophilia (CH, Apr'08, 45-4287). The book features valuable Internet resources and practical suggestions. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates and above. S. A. Mason Concordia University
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Pioneering researchers offer a superb overview of a complex disorder that interferes with the lives of more than six-million Americans. Frost (Psychology/Smith Coll.) and Steketee (Social Work/Boston Univ.), co-authors, with David Tolin, of Buried in Treasures: Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding (2007), were the first social scientists to conduct systematic studies of hoarding when they began collaborating 15 years ago. In this jargon-free book, they offer their best understanding of this remarkably common behavior that now has its own reality-TV show, Hoarders , on AE. Writing with authority and compassion, the authors tell the stories of diverse men and women who acquire and accumulate possessions to the point where their apartments or homes are dangerously cluttered with mounds of newspapers, clothing and other objects. Often intelligent but indecisive and tormented by their situations, hoarders form intense emotional attachments to their belongings, which offer pleasure, comfort and safety. "Without these things," says one, "I am nothing." The authors detail the lives of many sufferers: a librarian who is well organized on the job, but whose home is littered with belongings stacked on floors and furniture; a man living amid filthy objects scavenged on Manhattan streets, who remains utterly blind to his clutter; a nurse who gives neighborhood tours of easy-to-spot hoarder homes; and a filmmaker who cares for hundreds of hoarded cats. The subjects discuss the painful effects of growing up in a hoarder household; the differences between normal collecting and hoarding; and the issues involved in forced cleanups mandated by local officials for health and safety reasons, some of which have led to hoarder suicides. Hoarding may be inherited or driven by problems in the wiring of the brain, the authors write. There is a growing consensus that this secret afflictionnow considered a form of obsessive-compulsive disordershould be deemed a separate disorder in the next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. While noting their own limited success treating clients, Frost and Steketee stress that overcoming this disorder requires a heroic, perhaps lifetime effort. An absorbing, gripping, important report. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Fans of the A&E series Hoarders will be the ideal (but not the only) audience for this very intriguing book. The authors approach the subject, which they have studied for more than 10 years, from an analytic point of view. What makes people believe they shouldn't throw anything away? What causes otherwise ordinary men and women to fill their lives, and their homes, with detritus because they are unable to differentiate between useful items and waste? How is it possible for someone to live in a house full of trash and simply not know it is there (a phenomenon the authors call clutter blindness )? Hoarding isn't new Dante wrote about hoarders, and so did Dickens and most readers will recognize some aspects of themselves in the people the authors discuss. We may not be hoarders exactly, but the authors make us take a closer look at our own lives, wondering (for example) about that very fine line that divides a collector from a hoarder. Fascinating stuff that could generate some off-the-book-pages interest.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
We're not talking the "stuff" of stuffed closets here, but homes so completely packed that their owners can't cook in their kitchens because every surface-including the stove and sink-is covered, can't sleep in their beds for the same reason, and can't have visitors and often lose spouses and children because of the appalling living conditions. Psychologist Frost and social worker Steketee have been working with such troubled souls for a number of years and here introduce readers to some of their clients: Irene, an outgoing and successful real estate agent who hoards because each piece of junk seems beautiful and full of promise; Debra, for whom each piece of junk mail was a piece of herself; and Pamela, who hoarded cats. While mostly intended to enlighten the general public about this problem, the book contains advice for those who wish to help a loved one who is a hoarder. Verdict An excellent starting point for family, friends, and neighbors of hoarders, but the vivid writing will attract readers who enjoy fiction or memoirs about extreme behavior (e.g., Flora Rheta Schneider's Sybil and Hannah Green's I Never Promised You a Rose Gardener).-Mary Ann Hughes, Shelton, WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
