Meanings of Compulsive Hoarding: An Archival Project-ive Life-World Approach

Abstract

Existential phenomenological research in the Duquesne school has been rooted in experiential research but also includes what von Eckartsberg (1998b) and Garza (2007) have described, respectively, as hermeneutic or archival research (for more detailed accounts of this lineage, see Polkinghorne 1989; Smith 1983, 2002; and von Eckartsberg 1998b). In such research, human cultural objects such as films, novels, and, in this case, television shows are taken up as capturing “understandings” expressive of “projecting” (Heidegger 1927/1962) and as manifesting meaning horizons of the worlds from which they are drawn and of which they are expressive (Garza 2007). This article will examine meanings of compulsive hoarding, as manifest from multiple perspectives depicted in an episode of the A&E television series Hoarders (Barnes et al. 2010), as comprising lived worlds of intersecting project-ive horizons of meaning. These results are discussed in light of contemporary psychological literature on the topic and in view of the specific knowledge claims and limitations of archival phenomenological research.