The Psychology of Collecting

Where can I get from writing about the psychology of the collection? I have no degree in any of the Behavioral Sciences. (Has received a psychological foundations of education, my teaching credentials, some years ago. Got an 'A', but honestly, I thought it was all a bit silly.) The answer is simple. I have observed a hobby to hobby made man. In conversation with them, or rather, listening to them talk about a subject they love. (And I must say there are worse ways of learning aboutsomething. An interesting discourse, and a dull discourse are often separated by little more than discourser and his interest in this subject.)

Collect power designated as a subset of a larger human behavior, if only for reasons of convenience - hobbies. But I'm not sure if this is true, be thought. I suggest that collectors and hobbyists are entirely different things. Take people to model as evidence. I used to take my case work to train shows, when they came to the NorthCalifornia. Nice people, the model train "hobby", but they come in two different flavors. There are those who build tracks and small towns and mountains, etc. and then play with their trains. Then there are collectors who are somehow forced to made a separate sample of each of the Lionel locomotive in a given year. Or all the Lionel locomotives ever made. Or all locomotives, cars, tankers, vans, etc. of a given scale / year / manufacturer. Often they are not even open the package-lowering the value, as I was told. Both go to clients and collectors, show the same thing-and I guess talk to each other, but they are quite different ways.

Pathological Collector:

There are a few poor souls who are pathological in their collection. Not my word, "abnormal". The research people use this word to describe the collection to the point that it interferes in daily life. Their houses are filled and I mean that literally everyone - square-foot floor to ceiling filleduntil-it-crash-through-the-floor below filled with stuff created. These people usually have no incentive to adapt the material in its collection, but a playing field if someone tires to take something from it. There are some studies showing how this could explain this. Steven W. Anderson, a neurologist, and colleagues at the University of Iowa studied 63 people with brain damage after a stroke, surgery or encephalitis had no previous problems with hoarding in front of her illness, but according to filled their houses with such things as old newspapers, broken appliances or boxes, junk. The good doctor says:

These compulsive collectors had all suffered damage to the prefrontal cortex, a brain region in decision making, information processing and behavioral organization. The people who had remained normal behavior of the survey distributed brain damage, but it was instead of the entire right and left hemisphere of the> Brain.

Anderson posits that the urge to collect from the need, as food business - a drive so basic it is derived, originating in the subcortical and limbic parts of the brain. Humans need the prefrontal cortex, he says, which "shall be determined Accessories" to it worth hoarding.

I still need one more point before the only non-nutty-make-pathological collectors. But the reading I have done, suggests that the survey for-what-ever reasons, and to what degree each -- is not understood, and there really is not anything much clearer research out there. Which brings me back to my starting point, I do, than t'aint an expert on the psychology of collecting, because no one else out there who is better qualified, then I am.

NUT-CASE (non-clinical) Collector:

A little less "traumatic" / "dramatic"? - And it's pretty clear that I am here on thin ice psycho-babble - are the only OCD collectors. No detectable> Brain Damage - just good old OCD - or we can call it OCCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder collection). But I wonder how many people who are truly committed to a particular subject, (the collection of coins muttered shaking Denver Broncos, UFOs, conspiracy theories, you name it) have family and friends that they see the head and slightly of OCD in their breaths. But before we go by the collector's collector, with a capital C, coins, stamps, model car collector, etc.. weThe collector could be considered in all of us. It is a wonderful story written by Judith Katz Schwartz - Remembering Grandma. Your grandma was a refugee as a young girl from czarist Russia, which gained .... I quote ...

... the tips of Bic pens neatly wound with rubber bands, hundreds of tiny garment snaps at safety pins thread, at least a hundred glasses, all spotlessly clean, neatly rolled and clamped eighty-seven Ace bandages.

I thought that was a little weirdup to the cap, with whom I have a wood shop shares reminded me of the two large garbage bags I had with carefully cleaned BBQ sauce bottled. I love BBQ sauce and eat it on almost everything. A bottle per week. No idea what will come of them, but I know the day will come when I'm dang glad to have all these empty bottles of BBQ sauce.

Judith puts it in a rare and beautiful with friendly & understanding, I believe. In the above-mentioned article, it concludes with ....

Some peopleto collect for investment. Some collect for pleasure. Some people do it to learn about history. And save some people "things" because it helps them to put out a huge hole, calm fears, to complete uncertainty. For them, offering to collect in order in their lives and a bulwark against chaos and terror of an uncertain world. It serves as a protection against the destruction of everything she has ever loved. Grandma's things that made them feel safe. Although the outside world was a dangerous and continuouslyCountry in transition, she could still sit safely in their homes at night, "the compilation of my things."

Then there was an episode from the TV sit-com third Rock from the Sun. Perhaps you remember that Dick - (John Lithgow) has been obsessed with fuzzy friends. I take "Fuzzy Friends" for the producers way to prevent sued by the people who make the "Beanie Babies." If you be honest about things, I suspect most - if not all of us - saw a little of ourselves in theCharacter.

There's a whole different kind of nut-case collection, accumulated by dictators, as they practiced Bric-a-brac. Possible motives for collecting rich: coercion, competition, exhibitionism, desire for immortality and the need for the approval of experts. According to Peter York, a British journalist, studied decorative dictators for his book Dictator Style, recognizes all of the above in his subjects. It is basically a dictator task, he says, take everythingOver-the-top. For example ...

Saddam Hussein

Sci-fi fantasy paintings of dragons and menacing barely clad blondes.

Adolf Hitler

Bavarian 18th Century furnishings. Munich antique dealers were instructed to keep an eye on him.

Kim Jong-Il

20,000 videos (Daffy Duck cartoons, Star Wars, Liz Taylor and Sean Connery flicks)

Idi Amin

Several cars and a lot of old film reels of I Love Lucy repeats and Tom and JerryCartoons

Joseph Stalin

Westerns with Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable and John Wayne. Stalin also took Joseph Goebbels films.

He also points out that "Some of these people," he says, "were really very short."

VICTIMS Collector:

I do not know what they would ask. There are a few companies sell the objects, carefully designed so well and with such a frightening insight into their customers, and with such a deliberate marketing plans to exploit the poorCollector's peccadilloes that these collectors are victims of something, even - or the old in the sense of marketing companies who do not know which one.

Case in point is their Christmas cards and Hallmark Keepsake Ornaments. Compare especially the word "memory aware" and to the idea of "nostalgia". (Each research institution, seems to collect the PhD crowd was hanging on the word "nostalgia.") It is reasonable that the things that collect speak from the past. This is no more and no less than a historicalMuseum makes. It is also useful, things that trigger, let us gather hope pleasant memories of our own past. Remind (people my age, chutes and Ladders and Candy Land games. This is the kind of thing Daniel Arnett writes in her article Why we collect is published elsewhere on this page.) But these things are authentic.

Hallmark has made millions and I have nothing against money-selling-fake-nostalgia, let's not mince words here about women. If youRead the articles that I have, it seems clear that these women are women with careers, education, raise children, or, and we still do not gloss over here too.

And how far Hallmark goes to these poor women to buy to the next ornament or a series of 5 or 10 ornaments? Seminars, conferences, newsletters, autograph opportunities (to get the artists), and previously viewed. (Advance viewings for plastic ornaments fitted into the millions? YEP!)

Noteither Hallmark. Franklin Mint, Hummel figurines, small ceramics of English cottages, plaques with Elvis, consider the fact painted. Not for nothing are these things 'nostalgia'. When there always comes a kid's movie either McDonald's or Burger King has little plastic toys / figures / antenna balls of each character. Then children of a certain age must be fed Happy Meals, until they have the entire collection. (For Children "Nostalgia" extends all the way back to the movie they saw aentire week before.)

Accidental Collector:

My sister told me about a fourth and last category of collectors. This species could also be seen as victims, as well, but I had called them by accident. She writes ...

Someone once mentioned that they like X, and then later for years, all her friends hate them is X, and then really start to X. Loren and Bonnie [my nieces] once had a teacher that everyone knew in the whole school and loved giraffes and collected them. I wasConversation with her one day and she said it started years ago when she had said to do a project for the children to talk about himself. She used herself as an example and said out of the blue that she liked giraffes. Now, these poor women giraffe has all the possibilities, what ever made. She told me that they do not even like the damn animals.

The psychology of these poor souls is easy to understand. They are the "co-dependent" ( "random Enabler '?) Associated with a mildMass-OCD. You know it to be well intentioned, but they are too good to say something to himself off when he did. What will you do?

Judith has a wealth or excellent advice for collectors. And sell some very nice things to their own. Check out their website Twin Brooks and her book "Secrets of a Collecting Diva. I had this book before I made some of my articles, it would saved me a lot of time researching and producing wrote up stuff.