Pack rats: World-class savers

Compulsive hoarding: a site‐security model and associated psychological treatment strategies

“…The degree, however, to which any hoarder could ever be truly 'site-secure' is compromised by levels of extreme ruminative doubting (Rasmussen & Eisen, 1992). As such, the task of hoarding is never complete due to chronic ruminative doubt imposing severe limits on the degree to which the hoarder can make final and conclusive decisions regarding the 'micro' relationship to hoarded objects (Warren & Ostrom, 1988). Both chronic acquisition and chronic hoarding appear straddled by the anxiety of 'not having' exclusive ownership and control of objects, with the 'micro' behaviour of hoarding being driven by the avoidance of negative emotional states .…”

“…It appears that ubiquitous across intrinsic, instrumental and sentimental hoarding is the insecurity of making what is perceived by the hoarder as at least a very costly blunder concerning the rejection or discard of a cherished object or possession (Warren & Ostrom, 1988). The high levels of indecisiveness evident in hoarding (Frost & Shows, 1993) functions to maintain avoidance of objectfocused decision making.…”

“…An archetypal feature of hoarding is the sense of overwhelming and possibly perpetual emotional loss anticipated or experienced at the point of discard (Warren & Ostrom, 1988). Such losses obviously present a major source of threat to perceived security, with the hoarder opting for the safety of continuing to own and control possessions rather than the dread of, or actual experience of, losses to ownership or tenure (i.e., 'I'll keep this news paper and the information it contains; after all I can't get it back if I throw it away').…”

Formation of attachment to possessions in compulsive hoarding

“…Frost and Hartl's (1996) cognitive-behavioral model suggests that a central component of compulsive hoarding is a tendency to form intense emotional attachments to possessions. Unstructured interviews with people who hoard revealed that emotional attachment was one reason for saving (Warren & Ostrom, 1988). Similarly, Frost and Gross (1993) found that self-identified hoarding participants reported higher levels of emotional attachment to possessions than non-hoarding control participants, as indicated by higher scores on specific items of the Hoarding Scale such as ''I love my belongings the way I love some people'' and ''Throwing something away would feel like part of me dying.'…”

“…This presumption contradicts recent theory and research on compulsive hoarding. Strong evidence suggests that many hoarding patients display an excessive sentimental attachment to possessions (Frost & Gross, 1993;Frost & Hartl, 1996;Frost, Hartl, Christian, & Williams, 1995;Shafran & Tallis, 1996;Warren & Ostrom, 1988).…”