Defense Date

5-9-2025

Graduation Date

Winter 12-19-2025

Availability

Immediate Access

Submission Type

dissertation

Degree Name

PhD

Department

Psychology

School

McAnulty College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts

Committee Chair

Leswin Laubscher

Committee Member

Eva-Maria Simms

Committee Member

John O'Connor

Keywords

Hoarding, Hoard, Home, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Psychoanalysis

Abstract

While research on hoarding tends to isolate hoarders from the homes they hoard and in which they live, the hoard and the hoarder share a life in the home. This study explores how hoarders live with and live through their hoard at home. It combines psychoanalysis and phenomenology within a unique methodological framework to provide a hermeneutic reading of the psychological significances of the hoarded home. In this study, the contemporary conceptualization of hoarding is historically situated and critiqued from a phenomenological perspective, and the view that hoarding is a single, behaviorally-defined syndrome that is explainable by a cognitive-behavioral model is problematized. Major figures in the phenomenological and psychoanalytic traditions are placed in dialogue with hoarding cases from diverse sources (including Reddit, television documentaries, books, and a prior pilot study) to draw out deeper meanings of hoarding. These deeper meanings involve disturbances at the levels of the body, memory and identity, and intersubjectivity. The hoard is in each case shown to be uniquely constructed as an answer that works, however imperfectly, to address pressing psychological questions at these levels. This study demonstrates the utility of a functionally informed conceptualization of hoarding and provides important considerations for treating and working with people who hoard.

Language

English

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