**A New York Times Bestseller
Acclaimed psychologists Randy Frost and Gail Sketetee's groundbreaking
study on the compulsion of hoarding, "Stuff invites readers to
reevaluate their desire for things" (Boston Globe).
**
What possesses someone to save every scrap of paper that's ever come
into his home? What compulsions drive a woman like Irene, whose hoarding
cost her her marriage? Or Ralph, whose imagined uses for castoff items
like leaky old buckets almost lost him his house? Or Jerry and Alvin,
wealthy twin bachelors who filled up matching luxury apartments with
countless pieces of fine art, not even leaving themselves room to
sleep?
When Frost and Steketee became the first scientists to study hoarding,
they expected to find a few sufferers. Instead, they uncovered an
epidemic, treating hundreds of patients and fielding thousands of calls
from the families of others, exploring the compulsion through a series
of compelling case studies in the vein of Oliver Sacks.
With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a
hoarder--piles on sofas and beds that make the furniture useless, houses
that can be navigated only by following small paths called goat trails,
vast piles of paper that the hoarders "churn" but never discard, even
collections of animals and garbage--Frost and Steketee explain the
causes and outline the often ineffective treatments for the
disorder.They also illuminate the pull that possessions exert on all of
us.
Whether we're savers, collectors, or compulsive cleaners, none of us is
free of the impulses that drive hoarders to the extremes in which they
live. For the six million sufferers, their relatives and friends, and
all the rest of us with complicated relationships to our things, Stuff
answers the question of what happens when our stuff starts to own us.
