Misanthrope's Corner.(psychology of behavior behind people who do not throw things away)(Brief Article)(Column)

The words "new neurosis" are oxymoronic because the tics and twitches of humankind are eternal. They are also universal, so imagine my joy on finding a twofer: a virgin forest of deadly nightshade with a signpost reading "Only in America."

It's so new they don't even have a name for it yet. Calling it "collecting" or "hoarding," as two recent newspaper features did, is a pathetic understatement. The world has always had collectors --- John Fowles wrote a bestselling novel about one --- and there are so many people who never throw anything out that they long ago acquired a name: pack-rats.

Psychologists who have begun studying call it "OCD," for "obsessive- compulsive disorder," but that pales beside the behavior involved, which is to "disorder" as Bill Clinton is to "fib." Yes, this really is a new neurosis, and so American that the best way to describe it is to lapse into the literary style of Helen Gurley Brown. It's about people who never throw anything out, who save everything, no matter how icky- sticky-poo-poo it is, until somebody calls the Health Department!!!

To call such people slobs is to miss the point. Slobs might be messy but they also have a social life, so that when a big date is looming they pull themselves together and neaten up. OCDs, on the other hand, don't have to worry about what people will think because nobody can get in the house, including firemen.

Open the front door and you risk being buried under a landslide of old newspapers. The house is literally packed to the rafters with a mountain range of stuff that normal people throw out. The OCD navigates around it by a series of narrow cleared paths, like the trenches of World War I, past old Christmas trees, stacks of unopened junk mail, empty blister packs that once held baloney and batteries, used printer ribbons (and predating them, used typewriter ribbons), hundreds of expired grocery coupons, plastic forks that come with take-out food, TV-dinner trays, margarine tubs, pieces of broken dishes, burned-out light bulbs, and in some extreme cases, old cigarette butts, used paper napkins, and even used toilet paper.

It's shaping up into a great little mental-health crisis, complete with the usual exculpatory language. It is estimated that OCD afflicts some 2 million Americans, undoubtedly of all races and creeds, but this figure is probably low because OCD is, of course, underreported. Its victims almost never seek treatment, naturally, so only about 5 percent come to light, usually through health violations or eviction.

The problem, needless to say, goes back to their childhoods; most lived in a home with a hoarder and learned bad choices. OCD can be treated, but not with force, like the man who rented an industrial Dumpster and backed it up to his mother's door. Nor does it do any good to offer to help them clear out the mess because they have to reread all the expired coupons. They might also start "churning"-the psychologists' term for moving their detritus from one ...