gary card and henderson mccue at home in london
via www.theselby.com
December 5 2009
December 4 2009
Neighbours said Mr Stewart’s home had been accumulating rubbish for at least 10 years. This week, plastic bags were clearly seen piled across his front window, while outside further bags, broken furniture, computer parts and even an old TV set spilled over his front lawn.
Daily Mail :: Loner who built network of tunnels out of rubbish in his home dies ‘after getting lost inlabyrinth’
November 14 2009
» What's the deal with "cat ladies?"
They found that two-thirds of the obsessive collectors were women and that 70 percent were single. Cats and dogs were the most commonly stockpiled pets, and women were proportionally more likely than men to acquire cats.
I find this totally fascinating.
November 12 2009
November 11 2009
“ To this day, I will not clip coupons—my mother used to save entire newspapers for them—and if I haven’t worn something in a year or so, I throw it out
October 11 2009
“ For me, Tiananmen is a sacred place, that’s why I’m so devoted to collecting things related to it,” Yan says.
An Artful Clutter
“I think everything is a story,” he said of the arrangements he creates. “And the story can change a little by adding a single object.”
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“His eye is utterly unique. He will find something that you and I would completely ignore and instantly recognize its beauty. He’s more likely to go for a pipe fitting than a velvet pillow any day.”
via nytimes
September 27 2009
“Dr. Shirley Taylor, a licensed psychologist with Heartland Health Counseling Services, notes that most people who hoard are also isolated in terms of family, friends and relationships. They substitute things for people.
‘It provides them with a sense of security to have all this stuff, just like having another person can provide you with a sense of security,’ She continued.
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Randy Frost, a psychology professor at Smith College in Northampton, Mass., said most hoarders tend to be articulate and well-educated. They have sophisticated reasons for their collecting habits and tend to personify things.
‘They apply emotions to a range of things that others would consider worthless,’ Mr. Frost said.
Hoarding may be a leftover trait from primitive times, when our ancestors had to deal with shortages.
But for most people, the rational brain kicks in and keeps this primitive tendency in check.”
Alonzo Weston | Is down economy producing pack rats? | Stjoenews.net
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“People with this problem tend to have a first-degree relative who also does,” says Randy O. Frost, Ph.D., a psychologist at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. “So it might be genetic, or it might be a modeling effect.”
Gene research suggests that a region on chromosome 14 may be linked with compulsive hoarding in families with OCD.
What’s more, brain imaging studies suggest that compulsive hoarding involves a specific type of brain activity. Patients have a different pattern of glucose metabolism in the brain than either healthy people or non-hoarding OCD patients.
Sanjaya Saxena, M.D., director of the University of California, San Diego, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders Program, writes, “Other studies have confirmed that compulsive hoarding is strongly familial.” This research “adds to the mounting evidence indicating that compulsive hoarding is an etiologically discrete phenotype,” she believes.
Saxena concludes, “Compulsive hoarding syndrome appears to be a discrete entity, with a characteristic profile of core symptoms that are not strongly correlated with other OCD symptoms, distinct susceptibility genes, and unique neurobiological abnormalities that differ from those in non-hoarding OCD.”
Saxena concludes, “Compulsive hoarding syndrome appears to be a discrete entity, with a characteristic profile of core symptoms that are not strongly correlated with other OCD symptoms, distinct susceptibility genes, and unique neurobiological abnormalities that differ from those in non-hoarding OCD.”
