Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

by Lulu Miller

Psychologists have studied this, by the way, the sweet salve that collecting can offer in times of anguish. In Collecting: An Unruly Passion, psychologist Werner Muensterberger, who counseled compulsive collectors for decades, notes that the habit often kicks into high gear after some sort of “deprivation or loss or vulnerability,” with each new acquisition flooding the collector with an intoxicating burst of “fantasized omnipotence.” Francisca López-Torrecillas, who has been studying collectors for years at the University of Granada, noted a similar phenomenon, that people experiencing stress or anxiety would turn to collecting to soothe their pain. “When people have this feeling of personal inefficiency,” she writes, “compulsive collecting helps them in feeling better.” The only danger, Muensterberger warns, is that—as with any compulsion—there seems to be a line where the habit can switch from “exhilarating” to “ruinous.”