There are people who never throw anything away, from clothes that have not been used for decades, to documents that are now obsolete, to pieces of no longer known what, to the point of making garages and cellars unusable, or entire apartments, I know. Although from (relatively) little that this mania, as it would come to call it, entered the psychiatric disorders recognized in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders .
Research
Nick Neave, professor of psychology and director of the Hoarding Research Group at Northumbria University in Newcastle, dealt with the question, starting from the analysis of a case, reported a few years ago, from British Medical Journal in which the life of a 47-year-old man was described who, in addition to accumulating real objects, took ten thousand digital photos every day and spent his time copying and archiving them on external hard drives, with the result of worsening the state of anxiety linked to the syndrome autistic he was suffering from. It would be easy to read this situation as one of the many possible consequences of an autistic disorder and not as an independent pathology, but it is not so.
Disorder
Explains Giancarlo Cerveri, director of the Psychiatry Unit, of the Territorial Social Healthcare Company of Lodi: The accumulation disorder in the “physical” version is often overlooked because those who suffer from it do not feel such suffering as to feel the need to ask for help. The situation becomes critical only when everything explodes: the house becomes unmanageable and unlivable. In these cases, the problem is often reported by the exasperated cohabitants (assuming there are any because the serial accumulator often has a solitary life), family members or even the Hygiene Office because not always and not all the collected material is not perishable . Even more difficult to recognize the disturbance for those who accumulate information on memory hard drives, with enormous capacities.
Regardless of the way, real or virtual, in which it accumulates, why do some people behave this way?Do they become emotionally attached to what they collect?
Let’s start by saying that we are talking about people who are often shy, with a reduced social and emotional life, but with an integral capacity for judgment: they often understand the irrationality of their accumulation but are unable to limit it. Their behaviors do not indicate that they are replacing real affections with collected objects. They frequently begin to accumulate them according to a certain logic, so much so that in this phase the disorder is not recognized by family members. Then logic and comprehensibility tend to fall: the material becomes too much, so much so as to invade the life of the subject.
Are accumulators born or made?
The trend appears already at a young age, but develops only when there is more space for freedom. The theme that unites all serial accumulators is that of control. The impression of having everything you want available, albeit in a chaotic way (and which ends up resulting in the impossibility of finding what you are looking for) at least temporarily reassures. a little like what happens to those who suffer from dysmorphism: they never find themselves attractive enough and resort to continuous diets and aesthetic interventions. Satisfied for a short time, but then starts again
Could it be true that, far from doing yourself or the company you work for a favor, by never throwing away information, you risk the accumulator instead of opening the doors to hackers who are hunting for confidential information?
Poor hacker, in the chaos of a computer serial accumulator he would get lost immediately and without hope.
And what about the accusation that digital accumulators contribute to pollution?
Certainly an increase in the need for large servers for memory storage requires a parallel considerable increase in energy to keep them functioning, but not so much the individual or individuals – and in any case it is not masses of people – to have become a digital accumulator: I believe that the problem of the frightening accumulation of digital information affects the entire human species. Man has always tried to preserve his memories and a hard disk is more functional for the purpose of a papyrus, but perhaps less resistant than a clay tablet. Those of the Sumerians have survived for more than 5,000 years. What then can all the recorded data be used for thanks to IT means that due to their great capabilities, I would say by their very nature, do not impose choices, everything still remains to be understood.
Can the battery be treated?
If he comes to us with sufficient motivation, we can help him. Often for cognitive-behavioral therapy it is hardly accepted by the patient, who does not feel such and therefore opposes a fierce resistance to the idea of having to get rid of one’s possessions, even if only partially; it is also possible to intervene with drugs, such as serotin reuptake inhibitors, but obviously also in this case it is necessary to have the collaboration of the person, and the results of pharmacological interventions are not fully satisfactory by themselves.
May 8, 2021 (change May 8, 2021 | 19:39)
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