Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things

by Randy O. Frost

Hardcover, 2010

Status

Available

Call number

616.85227

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2010), Edition: 1, Hardcover, 304 pages

Description

With vivid portraits that show us the traits by which you can identify a hoarder, Frost and Steketee explain the causes and outline the often ineffective treatments for the disorder while illuminating the pull that possessions exert on all of us.

User reviews

LibraryThing member meganreads

I picked up this book for two reasons: (1) I heard an intriguing interview on NPR with one of the authors, and (2) I have a first-degree family member with a hoarding problem, and hoped that reading the book would help me gain insight into & make peace with the problem that so dramatically affected

my childhood.
The authors use several case studies to outline the myriad manifestations and common characteristics of the disorder, and in doing so pose a strong (though only mentioned once or twice) case for hoarding being listed as wholly separate from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder in the forthcoming DSM-V.
The people discussed are treated with respect and sensitivity, but the suspected causes and development of their problems are thoroughly explored. In some cases, particular treatments were at least somewhat successful and therefore offer hope and inspiration for people who read the book for my own second reason.
In addition to compulsive hoarding, the authors also explore the simple (or complex, actually) relationships all people have with objects. I myself do not have a hoarding disorder, but over the week I spent reading this book I found myself questioning my own relationship to certain items in my house -- I took out newspapers intended for recycling immediately rather than letting them pile up all week, I went through my closets and sent two garbage bags of clothing to Goodwill, and photographed/discarded a few items I've been holding onto for some implacable sentimental reason despite their lack of functionality.
Overall, this is an interesting book for anyone to read -- it gives the reader a sense of understanding regarding a little-discussed problem that touches more people than you may realize.

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24 more

LibraryThing member girlsgonereading

Stuff is first and foremost about hoarders-people who keep so much stuff in their homes that it negatively affects their lives- but it is also about all of us. Stuff forces its readers to look at themselves and wonder: why do I have all this stuff?

I agreed to read Stuff because hoarding fascinates

me, and my family has had some experience with it. My husband’s grandfather kept a very cluttered house, eventually filling an entire pole barn full of items from yard sales and the trash. Going through his items after his death was excruciating, and it was difficult to understand why he kept a broken rake, toy cars with only two wheels, and Tiffany lamps all together.

According to the book, my husband’s family is not alone. In fact, SIX MILLION Americans suffer from hoarding, and only recently are doctors beginning to understand its complications. It is a bizarre combination of nature and nuture-both genes and family conditions have been identified as factors. I had the misconception that most hoarders were elderly, and that the Great Depression had led to their condition. Frost and Steketee quickly addressed this false logic by explaining that in their research most hoarders have never experienced a period of extreme need or want.

Instead, they argue, most of them had a childhood of extreme disconnect/isolation from their parents. Their “recent research indicates that an absence of warmth, acceptance, and support characterizes the early family life of many hoarders, perhaps leading them to form strong emotional attachments to possessions.” Therefore, as children they learned to become attached to objects rather than people.

Still, I was amazed to learn that there are a variety of reasons why hoarders keep these items.

* utility: Everything has a use, and the hoarder believes that they will use the broken rake later to fix another one.
* opportunity: That piece of newspaper is an opportunity to be smarter, go on a trip, understand something greater, etc.
* fear of error: The hoarder can’t decide if this item is important or not, so he/she just keeps it.
* perfection: In an attempt to perfect a collection, he/she keeps all of the magazines published in 1999 together.

Millions more are affected by hoarding when you factor in their families, their caregivers, and their neighbors. At one point Dr. Frost participates in a house-wide cleanout in NYC. After speaking with a representative from the cleaning company he learns that a house-wide cleaning can cost upwards of $50,000 and that this particular company averages four such cleanings a day!

Ironically most of these cleanings are paid for by the city as a result of legal issues/social work, and they don’t end the hoarding because they don’t address the reason behind the issue. In fact, these house-wide cleanouts usually make the issue worse. The authors are concerned that hoarding is on the rise-with 11 million Americans owning storage space around the country-something that did not exist forty years ago.

Consistently in the book I was puzzled by the question: what is the difference between clutter and a hoard? What distigushes a collector from a hoarder? Apparently I am not the only one with these questions, and the authors argued that “(p)erhaps the best way to make the distinction between hoarding and normal collecting is to determine whether the behavior creates a problem for the family.” Still vague huh? Well Dr. Frost developed a Clutter Image Rating to help diagnose potential hoarders. Patients look at the pictures and determine which one looks like their house. Doctors are then in the difficult position of deciding if children in the home are endangered. If so, they legally have to report the hoarding issue which usually results in legal action and the patient not returning to therapy.

I really enjoyed this book because it was a combination of stories and scientific data. It also made me constantly aware of the items that we choose to keep in our home, our cars, and our lives. I still have not come to an answer about all of my stuff, but I do know that my fridge is cleaner after the chapter about food hoarding!

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LibraryThing member bragan

The authors discuss the lives and histories of various compulsive hoarders that Dr. Frost, a psychologist, has worked with, as well as the possible causes of hoarding and which therapeutic approaches might actually have a chance of helping hoarders with their often life-crippling obsessions.

What

struck me most about this book was how familiar so much of the psychology involved in hoarding felt to me. I mean, you look at people whose houses are so filled with random garbage that they can't open their windows and have to navigate around on tiny little goat trails through massive piles of stuff, and you find yourself thinking, how could anyone live like this? What could possibly be going on in their minds? Well, this book shows us what's going on in their minds, and it's not necessarily all that different from what goes on in any of our minds when it comes to how we relate to our possessions. For instance, Frost describes patients of his trying to sort through their belongings and decide what to discard, and their reasoning for keeping things often sounds surprisingly sane, if a little pack ratty. Oh, this magazine had an interesting-looking article in it that I haven't had the chance to read yet. These clothes don't fit my kids any more, but I might know someone who could use them. There's an interesting story behind this knick-knack, and that one reminds me of the really nice time I had the day I bought it. And, hey, you never know when random bits and bobs might come in useful; a stray pen cap could always double for a lost counter in a board game. Perfectly rational, mostly, except that these folks feel that way about everything. Seriously, everything. And while many of them have problems, such as severe OCD, that I can maybe understand intellectually but don't entirely "get", many aspects of the complex psychology involved in hoarding are surprisingly familiar traits that I've observed in myself and people close to me, even things that all of us are likely to feel from time to time. A sense of security in being surrounded by your own things. Buying things to make a bad mood feel better. A perfectionist streak that tells you that if you can't organize everything perfectly you shouldn't even try. Problems making decisions about what's worth spending time and energy on. A fear of being wasteful, or of missing out on an opportunity. Ordinary motivations, mainly, just... wildly out of control.

It's all utterly fascinating, if also a little scary, in a "there but for fortune go I" kind of a way. (Seriously, I can easily see how my own book-buying habit is different more in scale than in kind from the sort of compulsion that causes people to fill their entire homes with old newspapers.) And this book does a wonderful job of making people with this terribly stigmatized problem feel understandable and sympathetic and human. It may also be a good starting point for people who have, or have family members with a hoarding problem, and includes some resources for those who need them.

It's also made me really want to go home and clean out my closet.

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LibraryThing member GwenH

A fascinating and illuminating discussion on exactly what the authors claim it to be - compulsive hoarding and the meaning of things. It is a thoughtful analysis built around a series of interviews with hoarders who responded to ads for "packrats". While this limited the interviews to participants

willing to communicate and seek help with hoarding, the participants still experienced profound difficulties in showing and talking about their hoarding, and often reacted strongly to attempts at treatment. The authors presented a wide variety of people and examples of hoarding, always while treating those willing to be interviewed with understanding and respect.

I'd already seen shows on hoarding such as "Hoarders", so the depth of the hoarding was no surprise. What was new was the thoughtful and sympathetic analysis of the relationships people have with things. The highly readable book's approach was a bit like Freud's analysis of his patients in order to understand more general principles of the human psyche. The authors viewed much of the thought processes surrounding hoarding as normal processes taken to extreme or gone awry.

I think the author's discussion of the meaning of things brought into greater clarity my own relationships with things. I'm not a hoarder, but as the authors point out, we all keep things for reasons. Whether it's due to prior associations or future usefulness, we all have things we can't get rid of. When you finish reading "Stuff", you may not look at your own stuff in quite the same way either.

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LibraryThing member LoveOfMuffins4820

I came across this book while I was working a shift on the circulation desk. I'm addicted to the television show Hoarders, and I thought I'd enjoy this book as it promised to explore the psychological side of why people form attachments to their possessions. I placed a hold for the book and after a

few weeks I got my paws on it!

The book itself was a very easy read. Despite being written by mental health professionals, medical terminology was kept to a minimum, and when it was used, they explained it using simple language. Various facets of the hoarding syndrome were explored in each chapter and paired with a case study. Names of the patients were of course changed to protect them and their families, but their stories were told in touching, honest ways. Theories of the roots of hoarding were also explained (genetic, environmental, evolutionary...) as well as current research being performed on the syndrome. Supplemental information, such as hoarding groups, further reading and online support were included in the back of the book, as well as references and indexes.

What got to me while devouring this book in three sittings, was how many of my own tendencies I saw in the patients. I was always a bit of a packrat as a child, then as a teenager I found myself clinging to my possessions as a coping mechanism when I had to move a couple times in a short period. While I never hoarded to the same degree as the patients in this book, I could pick out the same patterns and relationships to objects. In part, it scared me enough to go on a bit of a cleaning rampage in the condo; but it also made me realize I'm not so strange, other people treat their belongings in a similar fashion. Some of my other, weirder habits (like contamination phobias) were prevalent in these patients too.

Basic summary: go read this book!

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LibraryThing member arielfl

This book is a lot of true hoarding cases presented in a highly readable way. I hesitate to call it entertaining because I can't really view others misery as entertaining but it was certainly a fascinating look into a disorder that has recently gained much attention. One of the most interesting

stories was about a woman who went to a psychologist for mental help and ended up inheriting the psychologists own cat hoarding problem. By the time the woman was able to extricate herself from the psychologist she was sleeping for only three hours a night and the rest of her time was spent taking care of both her and the psychologists cat hoard. This book is filled with many other truth is stranger than fiction stories. This book was more a book of case studies as opposed to a self help book although it did offer theories as to why some people are unable to throw out anything.

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LibraryThing member delphica

This was decent. It's a look at hoarding, and it really is from a clinical perspective and not the "OMG look at those crazy people with filthy houses" that you get on the TV shows about this. The authors go over a number of cases studies to illustrate various points (the downside of this is that

because the hoarders share so many characteristics, it feels a little repetitive after a while), and one of the most successful things the book does is show how the hoarders' problematic behaviors are often, at the core, similar to how typical, non-hoarding people manage their relationships with possessions and other things ... only jacked up to 11.

I did skip the chapter on animal hoarding, that just seemed like a bad idea.

Grade: B
Recommended: It's a quick read, I think it would be interesting for anyone who is vaguely curious about hoarding but thinks the reality shows are too voyeuristic.

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LibraryThing member lauriebrown54

When Frost and Steketee first started investigating hoarding, they figured they wouldn’t find very many cases. To their surprise, they found many. The items hoarded ranged from fine arts to new items still in the packages to old newspapers to animals to garbage. What drives people to amass things

like this? And where does the line between collector and hoarder fall?

Hoarding was formerly thought to be part of OCD; Frost and Steketee feel it’s a separate disorder. While OCD and hoarding can co-occur, the majority of hoarders fail to show signs of OCD. This probably explains why OCD can successfully treated, while hoarding is much more resistant to treatment. Forced removal of the hoard, ala ‘Hoarders’, never works and merely increases the stress the hoarder feels.

The authors cite numerous cases from their practice to show their treatment methods; it’s a very interesting book that offers hope to hoarders (and their families).

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LibraryThing member veranaz22

I "picked up" this book in the interest of gaining insight to one confirmed and one potential hoarder I know. I feel informed after reading this book, and to me, this book satisfies the need to understand. I love how this book mentions other books to reference in regards to certain subjects. This

book also made me realize how materialistic our society has become and that when it comes to objects, mankind is getting much more complicated a subject to explore.

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LibraryThing member goodinthestacks

Wish it covered more of the "meaning of things" rather than the case studies that seemed to repeat the same idea.

LibraryThing member LisaLynne

A friend who read last week’s review of Homer and Langley suggested this week’s book, Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy Frost as a follow-up. Stuff cover the story of the Collyer brothers in great detail. In fact, that’s one of the things about the book that

appealed to me — they focus on case studies, real people with fascinating stories. Some have more insight into their problems than others, but from each I learned very interesting things about hoarding and the people who struggle with it.

Why do people hoard things? We’ve all seen the shows — people living in house so crammed with debris and detritus that a normal person would be horrified. People hoard newspapers, animals, clothes, garbage and rotting food, even body by-products. They live in conditions that are unsanitary, inconvenient, and almost impossible to understand. What makes them do it?

It’s a complicated question and Frost and co-author Gail Steketee use a combination of research, case studies, anecdotes and theory to explain it. Basically, people who hoard don’t see things the same way normal people do. Their relationship with the items they hoard is very different. A person who hoards newspapers may do it because they see the newspaper and think of all the information it contains — information that will be lost if they throw the newspaper away. Nostalgic items like childhood toys can’t be discarded because the hoarder fears they will lose all the memories attached to those items, as if the toy embodies all those memories. A bag of old bottlecaps that most people would consider trash can instead be appreciated for their colors, their reflective properties, the patterns they make or crafts that might be constructed from them. It’s an entirely different way of viewing items.

For example, Jerry, one of the hoarders that Frost works with in the book, describes his feelings about throwing away the shards of a broken vase:

“I just want to save these…I’m remembering how it looked before it fell. If I throw them away, it’s like I’m giving up on it, and I hate to do that. It’s like I think somehow maybe it will get back together. I know it’s crazy, ’cause it can’t, but that’s what it feels like.”

I’ve always wondered, seeing shows like “Hoarders,” why people who have asked for help still fight so hard to keep their stuff. I mean, you asked these people to come and help you clean up your mess! The book helped to explain some of the reasons that people have so much difficulty letting go. One reason is avoidance. Making decisions is stressful — should I discard it and risk losing some cherished possession? But if I keep it, where will I put it? To avoid the anxiety, hoarders simply decide to do nothing. Leave it where it is. Don’t think about it. Much easier to go shopping.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m quite a packrat myself and I occasionally see some of my patterns in the case studies: assigning human feelings to a stuffed animal and being unable to discard it. Finding it much easier to let go of things if they’re being donated to a good cause, than if they are just being thrown in the trash. Promising myself I really am going to read all those cooking magazines someday. Reading these books — even if they aren’t intended as self-help books — has made me see those reactions in a new light.

The language in the book is easy to understand. The case studies are fascinating and tragic in a train-wreck sort of way. The ones that really moved me were the stories about kids, kids as young as 3rd grade who have hoarding problems. I would never have guessed that it could start so young! It’s not a how-to book, there are no step-by-step instructions on how to de-clutter your home. There is information on how to get help, if you or a loved one has a problem.

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LibraryThing member 4daisies

Randy Frost and Gail Steketee have written a fascinating and compassionate book about hoarding that gives insight into the thought processes a hoarder goes through as he or she considers their stuff. Like many others have commented, I can see some of my own rationale and behaviors within these

pages but I somehow manage to keep them under control (for the most part- maybe some would disagree when they see my piles of magazines and stacks of books... heh heh but I digress). What is it that makes some lose that control, letting the possessions take over as they live their lives in little more than narrow "goat paths" through their homes? Dr. Frost and his colleagues are seeking an answer to that question along with an effective way to diagnose and treat this often hidden affliction. The case studies were very interesting and include a wide variety of people affected by this condition from old to very young. In the last chapter of the book they have included the steps to take if you or someone you know has a hoarding problem. Okay, I think I need to go do a little sorting now.... ;)

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LibraryThing member kristinbell

I was compelled to read this as I am also compelled to collect things...like books! AHHH! If you like watching the A&E show "Hoarders" or the TLC show "Hoarding: Buried Alive," then you will enjoy this book. It is full of true-life stories of people and their hoarding habits, but it also peeks in

on the motivations behind hoarding, collecting and the "stuff" that we all fill our lives with. I really enjoyed this book in part because it was written by people who actually work in the field of studying hoarding. The authors are knowledgeable and they write well. This book is also accessible to people who are completely unfamiliar with the topic. The case studies peppered throughout the book are captivating. A seriously delicious book! Add it to your stuff!!!

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LibraryThing member TheAmpersand

Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee assert that most hoarders go to great lengths to hide their cluttered home environments from public view. It's funny, then, that one can see hoarders two or three times a night on basic cable these days. "Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things" gives

readers who seek a slightly deeper understanding of this disorder a good place to start. Frost and Stekete are uniquely well-qualified to write what might be the first layman's guide to hoarding, having been some of the first researchers to take hoarding seriously as a mental affliction.

One reviewer complained that too much of the book was taken up by case studies, and their criticism is justified. Much of "Stuff" is a recounting of houses the authors have seen and patients they've met. Some of these hoarders, Alvin and Jerry, wealthy twins who hoard whole rooms full of expensive art objects, are likely to provoke the same sort of morbid curiosity that A&E viewers experience, which is perhaps not the reaction the authors intended. Still, the anecdotal structure of this book might be attributed to the relative newness of the diagnosis. Even though hoarding seems like a pathology tailor-made for our mass-produced, relentlessly consumerist age, I was surprised to discover that it still isn't particularly well understood by psychologists and, while studies on hoarders exist, there are still considerable gaps in the literature. There's a payoff, though, as we get to see Frost and Steketee evaluate competing theories that attempt to explain hoarding behavior. Much of "Stuff" consists of informed speculation, with the authors remarking on hoarding's similarities to, and differences from, a host of other, better-understood mental phenomena, such as OCD and anxiety disorders. Frost and Steketee seem to have a great deal of insight into, and even compassion for, the hoarding personality, rejecting earlier conceptions of the typical "hoarder" and working hard to explain why some people find hoarding behavior so comforting. Their research is as wide as it is deep, as they provide a history of possible instances of hoarding going back hundreds of years and explain how our own feelings about our possessions are shaped by older ideas dependent on fetishization and "magical thinking." Indeed, their descriptions of some hoarders' thought processes, such as their close identification with their possessions and their uncanny ability to declare that something is "not just right," provide interesting insights into the bizarre ways that even "non-hoarding" people interact with their possessions.

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LibraryThing member barbpie

This entralling book by Randy O. Frost and Gail Steketee is a page turner. Reading about hoarder houses and cars packed with old junk mail, newspapers, and magazines is fascinating. Even the floors of some of these places are covered with a layer of detritus. Most hoarders are highly intelligent

and their hoarding behavior begins early in life. The authors, psychologists who work with hoarders and attempt to solve their hoarding problems, state that we all share some of the hoarding orientation to some degree. I have to say I was inspired to clean out a cupboard or two after I finished reading this book.

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LibraryThing member alexann

Stuff opens with the story of the famous Collyer brothers who shared a mansion in New York City. Langley cared for his disabled brother Homer. Unfortunately the piles of stuff in the house--newspapers, cans, grand pianos (14 of them), bicycles, box springs and more--were so huge that they toppled

over on Langley, suffocating him. Homer died later of starvation. Not so pleasant to think about, but fascinating in a can't-look-away kind of way. We meet other hoarders, and this is by far the most interesting part of the book--getting to know some of these people and seeing how very attached they are to all their things, and how it's a form of OCD that makes them bring home and keep so much of what they see.
The reader meets a couple of younger hoarders, several of whom seemed to have inherited hoarding from family members (either through genetics or example), but at least one who had had no previous contact with a hoarder. The reader studies the disorder along with the psychologist, and learns that there is still much not known about what causes hoarding and how best to help those who suffer.

Stuff was a disappointment to me. Perhaps too much science and not enough people?

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LibraryThing member tututhefirst

This is an extremely easy to read book about a very complex subject. The authors are definitely the experts in their field, and by presenting us with actual case studies to support their theories and findings we are able to understand the many manifestations of this problem. I got this book to help

me understand a hoarder who is a close acquaintance. Although I feel no closer to helping solve the problem, I at least have a full range of resources identified to help in my decision about what to do (or not do.)

In addition to the case studies, we are given a vast bibliography of other information and a list of questions to ask to help sort out the problem. It's good basic study of the pathology of hoarding and the psychology of why it happens. Well researched, it does not talk down to reader, but avoids excessive scientific speak. A great introduction to a very complex problem.

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LibraryThing member JGoto

The topic of Randy Frost's Stuff is hoarding. It reads like a text book, albeit with a fascinating topic. Frost includes numerous case studies and compares hoarding with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and other mental illnesses. While the book held my interest throughout, it did seem a little

repetitive in spots. Frost makes various distinctions between reasons for and types of hoarding, but they did not seem very different from one another to me. Perhaps that's why I felt the book had a repetitive quality. Most interesting to me were methods of measuring clutter (photographing the same room with different amounts of junk to use as benchmarks) and methods of treatment. After reading this book I found I could better understand the devastating effect of this disorder on the people who suffer from it and their family members.

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LibraryThing member cenneidigh

Well that was disturbing. I see lots of people I know and a bit of myself in these pages. I have a hard time getting rid of things so that I have a set of rules for new things coming in the house. Something comes in, something goes out, or the new item goes back to where it came from. The idea of

living in a house or apartment with halls created by piles of papers and junk scares me. My kids have to do that same thing and I clean out there rooms a few times a year to be sure they are not collecting to many things and especially garbage(Lego boxes, old school papers, instructions and boxes to items they bought that don't need to be kept.)
This was an eye opening look at how bad Hoarding can get, scary scary scary. This makes me want to spend my next day off cleaning out things we don't use much any more. I will bring less into the house this holiday season. We all need experiences more then we need more stuff. Stuff has to be dusted,cared for,organized,and it takes time from us, but experiences make only memories.

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LibraryThing member tripleAgirl

Interesting case studies and insights. This was hard for me to read at times since I could see pieces of me in some of the clients, but it was too rivetting to put down!

LibraryThing member hailelib

In Stuff The authors do describe actual hoarders and their 'stuff' but they also spend much of each chapter talking about the attempts at treatment and the possible nature-nurture causes of hoarding. It's not just the elderly and the socially inept who hoard but people of all ages and walks of

life.

Among Frost's case histories are people who are living in such dangerous conditions that their communities order a clean-out of their homes. This often causes as many problems as it solves and the hoarder generally is in the same situation less than a year later. Dr. Frost's most successful clients consider themselves to be recovering rather that cured and setbacks are common. Some clients are so distressed at trying to discard items that they terminate treatment instead.

If you know someone who you think might be a hoarder then this book is recommended since it has suggestions about what sometimes works and what never works.

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LibraryThing member pidgeon92

Excellent in-depth analysis of hoarding. Examples were fascinating.

LibraryThing member shelleyraec

If you take a look around the home office I sit in right now, it's all too easy for me to sympathise with the compulsive hoarders Frost and his colleagues interview in this book. I have 5 huge bags of clothes my children have outgrown that have been waiting a year for a garage sale, not to mention

4 boxes of books, two 'dead' computers, archive boxes that reach the ceiling packed with old tax records, children's artworks and my university notebooks. The wall to wall bookshelf sags in the middle where it is packed with books three layers deep and dust collecting ornaments that fall when my son bounces on his bed next door. Hmmm I am happy to blame it on the fact that six people live in this small house and there simply isn't enough room for everything I want to keep but I also recognise that perhpas its just a teeny bit out of control. Just as well I have no money to spend buying new things or I think I really could be in big trouble.I found Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things absolutely fascinating. I've read articles here and there on hoarders - mostly the extreme situations that make the news or popular television programs and I was interested to learn more about the psychological motivations. It's not so much the stuff that the hoarder is attached to but the meaning they apply to it - whether that is a memory, an emotion or the recognition of its intrinsic value due to to colour or shape. The stories of these very bright and likeable people, crippled by their hoarding, are sad. They are often isolated and frustrated by their condition. I was particularly surprised to find out how ineffective forced cleanouts are though it makes sense. Compulsive hoarding, whether it is art, rubbish, pets or books is a symptom of psychological distress and the author hints that its basis may well be biological. The condition is also most likely to be more prevelant than thought, though at varying degrees. Stuff can be a little dry at times but that is to be expected given the material and its author have a scientific background.Stuff is a very accessible combination of anecdotal stories and scientific study that offers an intriguing look at the issues of compulsive hoarding. I enjoyed reading the book and am seriously considering a real clean out sometime soon.

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LibraryThing member insidearaindrop

I'm a psychology major and could not put this book down. Many people are wanting a book with just multiple stories one after another of people afflicted by a disorder but don't want to take the time to understand that disorder. I find it to be a shame and quite insulting to the person the story is

about. In my mind, it's the same as sitting around a table and gossiping with cohorts: only interested in the juicy details and not interested in the person behind the story. This book was amazing in covering both sides and I greatly enjoyed it. I would love to read anything by these writers again.

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LibraryThing member stephaniechase

Part scholarly and slow moving, part endlessly fascinating, part repetitive.

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