| The term hoarding has become increasingly common in psychiatric literature with the escalating public awareness of and interest in stories of hoarding. This dissertation explores how depth psychology can enrich current conceptual models and treatment standards for compulsive hoarding by providing a deeper understanding of and potent treatment approach to what could be a core issue for hoarding individuals: the soul's wounding that has occurred. This dissertation poses the following research question: what does soul want in this cluttered and murky setting? The study bases its approach on a hermeneutic depth perspective, transiting a text from analysis to translation and bringing what is obscure and clinical in its meaning into something meaningful, where questions of origins, development, purpose, or utility are eliminated.;Historical research was conducted to explore the lived experiences of a sample of six individuals who suffered hoarding tendencies. Data was collected by invoking hospitality in the analysis of their stories, seeking fluidity, and allowing space for the language of images, metaphors, myths, and symbols to have a voice and reveal themselves in their hoard. Hans-Georg Gadamer's (1975) hermeneutic method provides an analysis of the text, which identifies four common themes and synthesizes the phenomenon's essential structure.;The historical figures' lived experiences and their core schemas of value, worth, and personal identity revealed a direct connection to excessive acquisition of objects as well as the general condition of hoarding. Themes of loss and shame were common, as was the presence of the numinous power of the shadow. Hoarders describe their stockpiles as part of their identity. Their possessions that possess them were a major source of happiness. The discussion of the findings treats these themes as the imaginal consummation of lovers, a coming together of emotions and physical connectedness between object and person, so as to provide the core concepts imaginally articulated from a depth psychological perspective. |
