Hoarding mysteries Jack would appreciate

Abstract

Hoarding disorder (HD) is a multifaceted problem that presents challenges both for understanding its dimensions and for developing effective treatments. We are grateful to have known Dr. Stanley J. Rachman and his incredibly thoughtful approach to clinical psychology and research on anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorders (OCD) and their treatment. His work has helped set the stage for our own efforts to study this challenging condition. The discussion below reviews a range of mysteries we and others have encountered in working with people who exhibit HD symptoms. Of particular interest to us are questions about biological vulnerabilities like heritability and the high rate of concurrent health problems and whether hoarded objects might serve as safety signals that protect people from traumatic life events. We are curious about the attachment process in HD and whether attachment to objects is related to early parental experiences that affect self-concept. We raise questions about the several information processing problems often seen in people with HD – attention focusing, memory, and associative responses to objects and information. Raising many questions are observations about strong emotional attachments to objects and multiple reasons given for saving them, as well as what sometimes appears to be remarkable aesthetic appreciation and creative interest in objects. Emotions in HD seem to range more widely than in some psychological disorders as both positive and negative reactions appear to reinforce excessive acquisition and difficulty discarding. Clutter blindness may be an effort to avoid confrontation with overwhelming clutter in the home. Finally, we comment on difficulty achieving more positive outcomes following a carefully designed cognitive and behavioral treatment for HD and encourage the next generation of researchers to follow in Jack Rachman's footsteps as they try to unravel these mysteries.