The Pathology of Collecting

'Collecting is an essential human feature that originates in the need to tell stories, but for which there are neither words nor other conventional narrative modes.' Cultures of Collecting: A Narrative Perspective on Collecting: Mieke Bal.

Mieke Bal identifies the act of collecting as a universal human compulsion, we collect in order to tell or preserve a story which ultimately expresses our identity and mortality. It could be said that there are varying degrees of collecting, a person may collect several related objects merely due to the fact they like this particular object, or as Freud would argue the act of obsessive collecting is due to a repressed desire or experience in our Unconscious Level. Could this act of collating inanimate objects for self gratification be due to an underlying psychological issue? There are many theories on this subject which highlight interesting issues with this common compulsion. Jean Baudrillard writes in great depth about collecting as a form of escapism, from reality, human relationships and even ones self. Baudrillard writes 'As Rheims puts it' for the collector, the object is a sort of docile dog which receives caresses and returns them in its own way; or rather, reflects them like a mirror constructed in such a way as to throw back images not of the real but of the desirable.' Lynn in the above video is a manifestation of this notion, the dolls she collects stay forever the same age, whereas in reality like her children they would age and become no longer dependant on her affections. Lynn even has a doll which looks like her son as a baby, by doing this she is perhaps creating her own reality in which her son never grew up. Although these 'Re-born' dolls cannot return her affections Lynn nonetheless devotes her days to caring for them, as Rheims says, these dolls are not returning her affections physically but perhaps on another level; they are her means escapism to a happy reality in which she is needed once again as a mother figure, or as Baudrillard puts it; 'To seek refuge within a synchronic haven might be seen as a denial of reality and a form of escapism, if it is indeed though that objects are being invested with what 'ought' to be invested in human relationships'. 

Lynn states that her collection gives her something to fill her days as she lives in a remote location where there is little to do. It seems that Lynn has little human contact, therefore lacks the opportunity to form relationships or friendships. This points to Baudrillard's notion that 'the poignant devotion to such creatures points to a failure to establish normal human relationships' however in Lynn's case it is less of a failure to establish such relationships, but more an absence of the opportunity to do so. Baudrillard notes that in order for the collector to continue to live they must continue to collect; 'the intercession of objects..allows us albeit regressively, to live out our lives' in order for lynn to be fulfilled she must continue to make these dolls so she can continue to live in her parallel reality in which to her perhaps these dolls are real. 

Lynn states 'the more realistic the better' this could perhaps suggest that the purpose of her collection is to make dolls that are increasingly life like. Perhaps the end to her collection would never be achieved as the aim could be to have a doll so lifelike that it was infact a real baby. It could also be said that due to her age, Lynn's collection is the manifestation of her unconscious fear or realisation that she will no longer be able to produce a real child.