Narcissism in Collecting Art and Antiques

This article was originally conceived as an examination of the psychological forces, both constructive and pathological, that take place in the world of collecting, evaluating, marketing, and restoring rare objects. Although this is made timely by the news being full of scandals surrounding auction houses, museum acquisitions, forgeries, and stolen property, I wondered about the value of a study of these issues for mental health professionals. To my delight (for the article anyway), these egomaniacal power struggles are easily transferable to everyday interactions with patients, colleagues, supervisors, and competitors. Our need to maintain a sense of uniqueness, and our vindictive struggle when it gets threatened invade every area of our lives.

Having something desirable creates security and strength, while lacking or envying create gaping lacunae. This universal human attribute spans all societies and belief systems. Therefore, we all collect. We collect knowledge, we collect techniques, we collect honors and degrees, we collect clothes and shoes, we collect experiences, we even collect friends. There is nothing cheap or tawdry about feeling safe with what we can rely on as being ours, so while being more specifically directed toward art collecting, this paper can apply to multiple areas of human communication and how it can break down in the face of a threat to ego integrity.

Collecting, as a sociopsychological phenomenon, is as old as the process of creativity. As soon as humans could conceptualize the idea of beauty, the acquisition of a beautiful object would guarantee present and future enjoyment, in the knowledge that it is always reachable, and that the experience of it is infinitely repeatable. On a primitive level, the fact that certain marsupials store food for the winter would perhaps demonstrate the instinctual need to provide for the future so as to afford the opportunity of eating even when food is not externally available. The main difference between