Possessed: A Cultural History of Hoarding

by Rebecca R. Falkoff

In Possessed, Rebecca R. Falkoff asks how hoarding―once a paradigm of economic rationality―came to be defined as a mental illness. Hoarding is unique among the disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5, because its diagnosis requires the existence of a material entity: the hoard. Possessed therefore considers the hoard as an aesthetic object produced by clashing perspectives about the meaning or value of objects.

The 2000s have seen a surge of cultural interest in hoarding and those whose possessions overwhelm their living spaces. Unlike traditional economic elaborations of hoarding, which focus on stockpiles of bullion or grain, contemporary hoarding results in accumulations of objects that have little or no value or utility. Analyzing themes and structures of hoarding across a range of literary and visual texts―including works by Nikolai Gogol, Arthur Conan Doyle, Carlo Emilio Gadda, Luigi Malerba, Song Dong and E. L. Doctorow―Falkoff traces the fraught materialities of the present to cluttered spaces of modernity: bibliomaniacs' libraries, flea markets, crime scenes, dust-heaps, and digital archives. Possessed shows how the figure of the hoarder has come to personify the economic, epistemological, and ecological conditions of modernity.

Genres: Psychology, History, Nonfiction, Sociology

236 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 15, 2021

Reviews

[Ian Chambers · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was really, uhhh, not a page turner, but it did manage to impart some wisdom about hoarding through the ages and that just gets my gizzard going. 3 gutter diapers outa 5.

[Felicity · Rating 2 out of 5]

An article in the London Review of Books alerted me to this recent addition to the rapidly expanding hoard of books on hoarding. Predictably, Falkoff's offering is no more a cultural history of the condition than the LRB article is a review of her book: both authors pursue their own personal and idiosyncratic preoccupations. In Falkoff's arbitrary approach to the topic, psychiatric case-histories, anecdotal accounts of childhood deprivation, literary and artistic representations of detritus accumulated by those who do not dispose of the disposables of a throwaway society, are used as evidence of individual psychiatric disorder rather than societal dysfunction. By a happy coincidence, I came across, and rejected, one of her sources, a pristine workbook containing checklists for hoarders, in my local charity shop, a treasure chest of discards from other people's dismantled hoards. Interestingly, despite her professional expertise in Italian studies and her references to Eco, a notorious bibliophile who died of natural causes not from being felled by a leaning tower of books, she fails to distinguish between bibliophilia and bibliomania. As a lesser bibliophile, I shall not be adding her book to my 'hoard' of clutter: it may soon be found in a charity shop near you.

[Jules · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent review of hoarding in the Western world across time, drawing on a wide variety of sources and deeply existential. I did find the discussion uneven in length: flea markets are given an in-depth study while contemporary cases of hoarding and episodes of Hoarders are breezed over. I'm not familiar with academic literature on hoarding, which at times seemed to be necessary to have enough background to truly follow some of the points being made. There are also some compelling photographs and visual art in this book, which is strongly empathic and considerate towards people considered hoarders and their worlds.

[Deedra · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was hoping for more history and less Freud. This was a good book,but it did not really get into the 'why'. Lee Ann Howlett was a very good narrator.I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.