Like other forms of OCD, hoarding is a symptom of a free-floating anxiety that searches for something to worry about. If there's no real something, the brain will scan the horizon for a substitute worry. In the hoarder's case, the worry is connected, often in a subliminal way, to a fear of loss. To throw something away is to feel miserable; to keep something, or to buy something and then keep it, is to momentarily feel better.

"Usually, if you look in their background," says Harrington about her hoarder patients, "there was some experience that heightened their sensitivity" to loss. One of her patients, for example, reported that as a young child she watched her mother throw out some favorite old items before the family moved to a new house. While another child might have been sad about losing sentimental things, this sensitive child was traumatized. As an adult she nearly buried herself in the things she wouldn't throw away.

Hoarders don't respond well to therapy, Harrington says. In one study of OCD patients, "without exception the hoarders were treatment failures." That's in part because, unlike other people with OCD, they often can't recognize the excessiveness of their behavior. "The hoarders wanted to justify what they were doing," Harrington says. The soda can collector insisted she planned on recycling all that aluminum.

It's possible, Harrington says, that many hoarders also have a co-existing personality disorder, perhaps an attachment disorder that originated in a childhood failure to be nurtured in a way that made them feel secure. This could be another reason why they're hard to treat, she says.

Ginger Penney, a partner in The Penney Group, says this is not the first hoarder the 22-year-old estate liquidation company has come across. One woman, for example, owned a thousand empty margarine containers.

"She's a lovely lady," Penney says about the woman whose things were sold last weekend. "To look at her you'd never know she's a hoarder," says the woman's daughter. "She's neat and clean and well-dressed."

Some months ago the woman ordered $10,000 in merchandise from QVC. By then she could no longer get credit cards at Nordstrom or Dillard's. But she could still shop at Costco, where she bought thousands of dollars worth of books, only some of which she ever read.

Her family tried a psychological intervention that didn't work and also contacted County Aging Services, the fire department and QVC. Aging Services sent someone over who agreed that the house was a mess but noted that the woman herself was clean. The fire department agreed that the house was a mess but didn't make the woman throw anything away.

Animal Services noted that the woman's four cats were well fed. QVC wasn't willing to put a stop to the woman's purchases. "Every time we reached out, the family was told 'There's nothing we can do."'

Last year, when the woman failed to pay her bills, her utilities were shut off. Then she lost her house. Her family persuaded her to move into assisted-living, where she will reside with some of her favorite antiques and mementos. Many of the other things were for sale during the weekend: teddy bears and steamers and cookbooks and dresses, nearly every one of them brand new.

---

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com