Our Consumer Culture’s Double Bind for Hoarders

I want to offer one simple image for this holiday season, this time of the year awash in the acquisition of things.

We live in a society so nakedly consumed with consuming and so nakedly promoting of consumption. And yet we look on clutterbugs and people who hoard as sufferers of some mysterious malady—some curious and shocking illness.

But aren’t the societies and economies we live in profoundly hoarder-genic?

Consider this screen shot from the Oprah.com website. I took it off my (scruffy) laptop while working on my book, Mess.

Source: Barry Yourgrau

The webpage concerns what was then called Compulsive Hoarding: Oprah’s expert commentator was Dr. David Tolin of the Institute of Living at Hartford Hospital. Tolin is one of the public figures in the psychology of hoarding, a sometime co-author with leading hoarding psychologists Dr.’s Randy Frost and Gail Steketee (wrote the seminal book on hoarding, Stuff.)

And right there in the middle of Tolin’s commentary, you have a pop-up ad that zingily encourages the very behavior Tolin is trying to alleviate.

I’m not singling out Oprah.com here. The Oprah organization has been very concerned about the problem of hoarding and the suffering of people who hoard. But the screenshot neatly encapsulates how profoundly mixed are the messages about over-acquisition in our society.

An image to ponder over the happy holidays. And a very Happy New year to you!