Review by Mary Case

This compelling book reveals that many very sophisticated collectors began their passion during unhappy childhoods. Collecting became for them, a way to gain control over the a chaotic environment. Collecting, which of course isn't what it' s called if you are six years old, becomes an exercise in intimacy. Ownership is the most intimate relationship one can have with an object and the young collector extends his life force through the object. Control of the object can bring relief of the child's anxiety and frustration that comes with feeling helpless and being alone. You acquire an object and find the wherewithal to care for and protect it.

I once had a man working for me who began a comic book collection when an older brother gave him one at the age of four. My employee was born into an alcoholic family, riddled with violence. As a boy, he would use his hoarded quarters—often given to appease the guilt of the surrounding adults. Go get an ice cream, he remembered they would slur as they wove and thrust nicotine-stained fingers filled with coins toward him. He would buy comic books and retreat to a back room closet—is private haven—and immerse himself in another world where he commanded the action. Later, he turned his interest toward the intellectual pursuit of collecting all the volumes in a series and toward housing and storing the collection in museum quality conditions. So, the act of collecting was for him an act of maturation, of fantasy, yes, but of self-protection, too, ultimately a lynch pin of his development. He became a lawyer, this boy, and leader in the fight against alcoholism.

In a section entitled Skulls and Bones, Muensterberger goes on to talk about the relationship between the collector and us—the museum experts. He says that there are opposing forces at work within the collector in this relationship—a desire for self-assertion through ownership and a sense of guilt over narcissistic urges and pride. These forces may require the expert's authority as a parental substitute who provides guidance, helping to eliminate the inner conflict.

In the next chapter—The Headhunter's Request—he describes the fundamental affinity and intrinsic power, between skulls of an ancestor, a sacrificial victim, and a martyr. He goes on to describe how relics lose their original pious meaning and become valuable commodities which attract pious visitors—tourist beacons. Muensterberger leaves no sacred cow unmilked. Ouch. He blasphemes in fascinating ways.

His further examples—three psychobiographies—of extraordinary collectors, hoarders, one may say, Sir Thomas Phillipps a British book and manuscript collector, French novelist Honore de Balzac an obsessional collector of bric-a-brac, and a certain unnamed Mr. G, are less interesting because of their peculiarities.

Usually, I'm uninterested in completing books like this, because I feel as if the first one hundred pages gives me enough of the story. This book, however, was worth the time to plow through the later sections that talk of passion, collecting throughout the Dark and Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. In the Rational Age, the collectors distinguished between man-made and natural specimens (artificialia and natulia). A concomitant awakening curiosity put an accent on information and an intellectual delight in classification and order. He finishes his historical review In Praise of Plenty: Collecting During Holland's Golden Age. He posits that the widespread inclination to collect objects and art during this period constituted a continuing attempt at reintegrating contentment with tangible things after decades of deprivation.

Many collectors, he concludes, represent a personality type driven by an obsessional need to control. They may romanticize and idealize the collecting experience and they may exhibit disciplined, systematic and scholarly characteristics. In the extreme, they transfer the need for unreliable human intimacy to self-indulgence with objects.

At three agendas dominate our work. The First Agenda includes the content, product, or results of the organization. The Second includes the processes needed to succeed at First Agenda endeavors. The Third Agenda focuses on personal transformation and understanding the forces operating on the individual. An Unruly Passion provides grist for those seeking to understand the minds of collectors museum professionals work with daily. We're them!