Free Stuff by Gail Steketee Page A

it to the collection, arranging for its display. Often subtle rituals accompany newly acquired objects. For instance, Freud used to place new acquisitions on his dining room table so that he could admire them while he ate.
    Some people collect out of a desire for an aesthetic, others for prestige, and still others for a sense of mastery. But most theories of collecting elaborate on attempts to define, protect, or enhance the self. This is borne out by people's reactions to losing things to natural disasters or thievery. Most burglary victims feel that they have been violated, and many women liken it to being raped.
    Anthropologists have described cultural practices in which people connect themselves to objects by licking or touching them. Likewise, the grieving in some cultures over the possessions of a deceased loved one demonstrates the extent to which a possession can be considered an extension of personal identity. This is the same phenomenon we observed with my students and Jerry Seinfeld's shirt. The connection between the object and its former owner transcends rationality. It is symbolic and magical.
    Many collectors think of their collections as a legacy to pass on to their heirs or even the world. Some, especially art collectors and collectors of historical artifacts, donate their collections to museums or create their own museums for posterity. This has led some scholars to suggest that collecting is a way of managing fears about death by creating a form of immortality. This is consistent with a popular theory in social psychology called the terror management theory (TMT). TMT grows out of an existential predicament—that people, like animals, are mortal. But unlike animals, we are aware of our own mortality. Knowledge of the inevitability of death and its unpredictability can produce paralyzing fear. To cope with this potential terror, cultures provide beliefs, rituals, and sanctioned strategies for managing it. One of these strategies is the belief that some part of ourselves can live on after we die. Producing or amassing something of value is one way to accomplish this. Thus a collection offers the potential for immortality.
    Quite a different theory of collecting relates to how people evaluate their self-worth. The compensation theory suggests that people who question their self-worth need evidence to reassure themselves of their value and importance. Physical objects provide clear and tangible verification of mastery over the world. The feedback boosts the collector's self-esteem and contributes to a positive self-image. William Randolph Hearst, founder of the Hearst publishing empire (and the model for the title character in the movie
Citizen Kane),
accumulated a vast collection of tapestries, paintings, sculptures, furniture, coins, and much more. He used some of the items to furnish his palatial home, but the majority filled warehouses throughout the country. Perhaps his collecting provided him with much-needed evidence of his mastery over the world. (Many of these collections are now on display at the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California.)
    Some collectors show extreme behaviors that straddle the border between eccentricity and pathology. Andy Warhol, an artist, filmmaker, photographer, and celebrity, is credited with the development of pop art, a movement in which art reflected the popular culture of the time. Warhol's paintings of brand-name products such as Campbell's soup and Coca-Cola were re-creations of the culture, ways of preserving not the exceptional but the mundane. He was also an avid collector and spent part of every day shopping at flea markets, antique stores, auction houses, and galleries—anywhere he might find something of interest. He collected not only fine art of every style and period but also what many considered junk. Like other famous collectors, Warhol displayed little of what he bought and tucked most of it away in warehouses. Still, his five-story house in New York