A while back I read an article — I think it may have been by Andy Rooney — that indicated that he’s actually developed an attraction for some some of his possessions. I got to thinking about that and decided that I may have done the same thing.
I remember that our kids both had inanimate objects that they had a real attraction to — so much so that they wouldn’t leave the house without them, or if one became lost, it created a real crisis. I don’t remember having anything like that when I was young, but later in life, I realized that I had grown attached to some objects. After we were married, Claire accidentally “ruined” a couple of my favorite shirts, and tossed them out. I didn’t think so at the time, but thinking about it, I think I had actually developed some kind of attraction to those shirts.
Well, something like this just begs for some of my extensive research, so I dug into the subject a bit. I ran across one “expert” that believed (extreme) object attachment in adults can form as a way to compensate for a lack of interpersonal attachment or as a symptom of a hoarding disorder. As individuals age, they inevitably experience a series of cognitive, emotional, and physical changes that may influence their attachment to objects. I guess that all sounds somewhat reasonable to me.
Object attachment is the experience a person has when they feel an emotional attachment to an inanimate object and may even feel a sense of loss if they were to part with the object. Studies indicate that normative levels of object attachment exist across one’s lifespan. For example, many adults own “a favorite suit” or a “lucky sweater” to which they feel emotionally attached, whether for aesthetic (“I like how I look when I wear it’,”) sentimental; (”My dad gave me this watch,”) or superstitious purposes (”If I wear this on gameday, my football team will win.”)
The research papers I read indicate that hoarding disorder symptoms usually begin before the age of 20 and the symptoms continue to increase throughout the life of the hoarder. As adults age, they may have increased sentimental thoughts toward their possessions that elicit subsequent increases in attachment to those objects.
Obviously, there’s way too much data on this subject to discuss here, but one area that came to light during my extensive research, caught my eye… animism.
According to some experts, animism is one of the strangest reasons why one can suffer from objectophilia. Animism is the religious belief that objects and structures possess a distinct spiritual presence. Hence, the phrase “That doll is possessed.” Potentially, animism perceives all things — animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, human handiwork, etc. as animated and alive. This seems like a good place to get off this subject.
I really didn’t intend to to do as much extensive research on this subject as I did — I just wondered why I still miss my shirts so much…..
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