As psychopathologies go, hoarding is relatively new but unquestionably fashionable. E.L. Doctorow published a novel last year ("Homer and Langley") about the Collyer brothers, the Manhattan recluses whose five-story brownstone, in 1947, yielded 170 tons of closely packed objects, including 14 grand pianos and the brothers' corpses.
There are no authoritative statistics on hoarding in America, but the authors suggest that it is a more widespread phenomenon than is generally realized. There are therapists who deal exclusively with hoarders and specialized cleaning crews with more business than they can handle.
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