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Where do I get off writing about the Psychology of Collecting? I have no degree in any of the behavioral sciences. (Took a Psychological Foundations of Education to get my teaching credential some years ago. Got an 'A', but frankly, I thought it was all a bit silly.) The answer is straightforward. I've produced a hobby of observing people's hobbies. Talking to them -or additional accurately- listening to them talk about a subject they adore. (And I have to say that there are worse methods to understanding about something. An intriguing discourse and a dull discourse are usually separated by little a great deal more then the discourser and his or her interest in that topic.)
Collecting may be thought of as a subset of a larger human behavior named -if only for the sake of convenience - hobbies. But I'm not positive this is accurate. I theorize that collectors and hobbyists are entirely distinct points. Take model train folks as evidence. I employed to take my casework to train shows when they came to northern California. Nice many people the model train 'hobbyists', but they come in two distinct flavors. There are those who build tracks and small cities and mountains etc. and then play with their trains. Then there are collectors who are somehow compelled to own a sample of each and every locomotive the Lionel made in a given year. Or all the locomotives Lionel ever made. Or all the locomotives, vehicles, tankers, cabooses, etc of a given scale / year / manufacturer. Often they do not even open the package -reduces the value, I'm told. Both the builders and the collectors go to the very same show and -I suppose- speak to each and every other -but they are entirely distinct species.
PATHOLOGICAL COLLECTORS:
There are some poor souls who are pathological in their collecting. Not my word, 'pathological'. The study folks use this word to describe collecting to the point that it interferes with everyday life. Their houses are filled -and I mean literally every single-square-foot- floor-to-ceiling-filled- until-it-crashes-via-the-floor-below FILLED with stuff. These many people normally have no interest in the stuff in their collection, but pitch a fit if someone tires to take any of it away. There is some research indicating how this could possibly be explained. Steven W. Anderson, a neurologist, and his colleagues at the University of Iowa studied 63 consumers with brain harm from stroke, surgery or encephalitis who had no prior problems with hoarding prior to their illness, but afterward, began filling their houses with such things as old newspapers, broken appliances or boxes of junk. The fantastic Physician says:
These compulsive collectors had all suffered harm to the prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in decision producing, information processing and behavioral organization. The men and women whose collecting behavior remained standard also had brain harm, but it was rather distributed throughout the perfect and left hemispheres of the brain.
Anderson posits that the urge to collect derives from the want to shop supplies such as food--a drive so fundamental it originates in the subcortical and limbic portions of the brain. Humans need to have the prefrontal cortex, he says, to identify what "supplies" are worth hoarding.
I require to make 1 last point just before moving on to the merely nutty-non-pathological-collectors. All the reading I've performed suggests that collecting for -what-ever reason and to what-ever degree- is little understood and there is certainly not all considerably clear investigation out there. This takes me back to my starting point -I get to pretend to be an professional on the psychology of collecting because t'aint no 1 else out there who is any superior qualified then I am.
NUT-CASE (non-clinical) COLLECTORS:
Somewhat much less 'traumatic' / 'dramatic'? - and it is fairly clear I'm on thin-ice psycho-babble here - are the merely obsessive compulsive disorder collectors. No detectable brain harm - just beneficial old OCD - or we may call it OCCD, (Obsessive Compulsive Collecting Disorder). But I wonder how numerous many people who are genuinely committed to a given subject, (coin collecting, the Denver Broncos, UFO's, conspiracy theories, you name it) have family and buddies who appear at them, shake their heads and mutter some thing about OCD under their breaths. But prior to we get on to collectors -Collectors with a capital C, coins, stamps, model railroad vehicle Collectors, and so on., we may possibly take into consideration the collector in all of us. There is a delightful story written by Judith Katz-Schwartz - Remembering Grandma. Her grandma was a refugee -as a extremely young girl- from Tsarist Russia who collected.... and I quote...
...the tops of Bic pens neatly wound with rubber bands hundreds of tiny garment snaps threaded onto safety pins at least 1 hundred glass jars, all sparkling clean eighty-seven neatly rolled and clamped Ace bandages.
I thought this was a little funny, till the chap with whom I share a wood shop reminded me about the two huge garbage bags I have filled with cautiously cleaned BBQ sauce bottles. I love BBQ sauce and eat it on nearly almost everything. About a bottle a week. No idea what will ever come of them, but I KNOW the day will come when I'm dang glad I have all these empty BBQ sauce bottles.
Judith sums it up beautifully and with kind & rare insight, I believe. In the above mentioned write-up, she closes with....
Some folks collect for investment. Some collect for pleasure. Some folks do it to find out about history. And some many people "save issues" since it helps them to fill a gaping hole, calm fears, erase insecurity. For them, collecting supplies order in their lives and a bulwark against the chaos and terror of an uncertain world. It serves as a protectant against the destruction of everything they've ever loved. Grandma's points made her really feel safe. Although the world outside was a hazardous and continually changing place, she could still sit safely in her apartment at night, "putting together my issues".
Then there was an episode from the Tv sit-com Third Rock from the Sun. You may keep in mind that Dick -(John Lithgow) became obsessed with Fuzzy Buddies. I take "Fuzzy Buddies" to be the producer's way to keep away from becoming sued by the folks that make "Beanie Babies." If one had been to be perfectly honest about factors, I suspect most - if not all of us - saw a little of ourselves in the character.
There is an additional fairly unique type of nut-case collecting -that practiced by dictators as they accumulate bric-a-brac. Possible motives for collecting abound: compulsion, competition, exhibitionism, desire for immortality and the need for experts' approval. According to Peter York, a British journalist who studied dictators' decor for his book Dictator Style, recognizes all of the above in his subjects. It is fundamentally a dictator's job, he says, to take everything over-the-top. For example...
Saddam Hussein
Sci-fi fantasy paintings featuring menacing dragons and barely-clad blondes.
Adolf Hitler
Bavarian 18th century furniture. Munich antique dealers were ordered to maintain an eye out for him.
Kim Jong II
20,000 videos (Daffy Duck cartoons, Star Wars, Liz Taylor and Sean Connery flicks)
Idi Amin
Several racing cars and loads of old film reels of I Enjoy Lucy reruns and Tom and Jerry cartoons
Joseph Stalin
Westerns with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Wayne. Stalin also inherited Joseph Goebbels's films.
He also points out that "Some of these consumers," he says, "were definitely extremely short."
VICTIM COLLECTORS:
Don't know what else to call this set. There are a couple of corporations that sell stuff so well -and with such frightening insight to their prospects, and do so with such deliberate marketing plans carefully developed to exploit the poor collector's peccadilloes, that these collectors are victims of something -themselves - or the mean old marketing and advertising providers, do not know which.
Case in point is Hallmark Cards and their Christmas Keepsake Ornaments. Note particularly the word "keepsake" and compare it to the concept of "nostalgia". (Any investigation into collecting by the PhD crowd appears to hang on the word "nostalgia.") It is reasonable to collect issues that speak from the past. This is no additional nor less then any historic museum does. It is also reasonable to collect issues that trigger -let us hope- pleasant memories of our own past. (Many people of my age remember Chutes and Ladders and Candy-Land games. This it the sort of thing Daniel Arnett writes about in her article Why We Collect, published elsewhere on this web page.) But these items are authentic.
Hallmark has created millions -and I have absolutely nothing against producing money- selling fake nostalgia -and let us not mince words here- to women. If you had been to read the articles I have, it also seems clear that these girls are not ladies with careers, educations, kids to raise, or -and we are still not mincing words here- considerably else to do.
And what lengths will Hallmark goes to get these poor women to invest in the next ornament -or series of five or 10 ornaments? Seminars, conventions, news letters, autograph opportunities (the artists), and advance viewings. (Advance viewings for plastic ornaments stamped out in by the millions??? YEP!)
Not just Hallmark either. Consider Franklin Mint, Hummel Figurines, small ceramics of English cottages, memorial plates with Elvis painted thereon. Not for absolutely nothing are these items 'nostalgic'. When ever a kid's movie comes out either McDonald's or Burger King has little plastic toys / figurines / antenna balls of every character. Then children of a specific age ought to be fed Pleased Meals until they have the entire collection. (For youngsters "nostalgia" stretches all the way back to the movie they saw a whole week ago.)
ACCIDENTAL COLLECTORS:
My sister tells me of a fourth and final category of collector. This sort could possibly well be viewed as a victim as properly, but I chose to call them accidental. She writes...
Somebody mentions as soon as that they like X and then for years later all their friends give them is X and then they really start out to hate X. Loren and Bonnie [my nieces] as soon as had a teacher that every person in the whole school knew loved giraffes and collected them. I was talking to her one day and she mentioned it all started years ago when she was explaining a project the kids had to do to tell about themselves. She applied herself as an example and stated out of the blue that she liked giraffes. Now this poor ladies has received each and every probable giraffe thing ever made. She told me that she does not even like the damn animals.
The psychology of these poor souls is straightforward to fully grasp. They are the 'co-dependent,' ('accidental enablers'?) nexus of a mild mass-OCD. They know it to be properly meant but they are too kind to say anything to get themselves out if it. What are you gonna do?
Judith has a wealth or great advice to supply collectors. And some rather nice stuff of her own for sale. Check out her internet site Twin Brooks and her book Secrets of a Collecting Diva. If I had her book prior to I wrote some of my articles it would have saved me a lot of time researching and generating-up stuff.