Shirley M. Mueller M.D.

A challenge to the assumption that hoarding is purely behavioral or rooted in indecision. Key points A recent study on hoarding points toward an interplay among emotion, perception, and social cognition. The mind’s need for connection, when unmet, may be rerouted toward the tangible, an adaptive strategy. The clutter that fills a hoarder’s home might be read as a neuropsychological footprint of loneliness. In Amanda Uhle’s recent book, Destroy This House (Summit Books, 2025), Uhle describes...

The neurological and psychological differences between hoarding disorder and OCD. Hoarding disorder (HD) has been considered a type of...