Fads and Obsessions

A psychological observation and inquiry.

I have noticed that there are people who obsess and people who don’t. Another way of saying what I mean when I say obsess here is that some people are prone to fads. A fad being: "A fashion that is taken up with great enthusiasm for a brief period of time; a craze." (from dictionary.com) I’m not sure what all the not-obsessive types would be, though one would be the kind that just doesn’t get excited about anything, in fact doesn’t really do or think about anything they don’t have to, I know some people like this. Anyway, the Obsessors seem to make up a good deal of the population - how else could pop-culture survive? That is not to say that all pop-culture savvy people are obsessors, nor that obsessors don’t obsess over many other things that are not popular - there are thousands of little one-person fads going on out there.

The characteristics of the Obsessor or Fadd-ish person, as I think of that personality type, are these: 1a) they are constantly finding new things they really like, 1b) they do not continue to really like most of these things for more than a few months to a year on average. 2) they will go to great lengths to discover all they can about the topic they are currently obsessed about (this may include anything from reading a number of heafty books, to stalking, to fumbling into highly embarrasing situations in the attempts to gain some connection with their obsession) 3) they are driven to collect as much paraphanalia associated with their obsessed topic as possible, and usually display it all prominently in their room, attempting to cover every inch. 4) it is difficult to talk to them about anything else, in fact it is dificult to talk to them at all because usually they are busy talking to you and anyone else who will listen about whatever it is they are obsessed with - this is because they cannot get it off their mind for a moment -every new topic leads back to this one. 5) they have a tendancy to try to appear to be experts on their topic, even with people who could care less about it -which means they won’t gain any respect from that individual. It doesn’t matter, they want to feel like an expert anyway.

The two main charactersistics are that Obsessors get extreemly interested and excited about things (that’s the obsession part of course), but they do not stick with one thing for very long (that’s the fad part). It seems it is impossible for them to be interested in more than one thing at once, but their interest is very intense.
I think it would be interesting to do a study on how much people actually remember from their previous obsessions. I think they probably do retain much of it, but it ceases to be constantly on their minds. Their paraphanalia is relegated to the back of drawers, boxes on the highest shelf, the far corner under the bed, and their vast stores of trivia filed away under ‘nostalgia’ or ‘I can’t believe I was into that’ categories of the mind.

Now it seems to me that in general people who stay very interested in one thing their whole life do not tend to obsess quite as much - we see charicatures of such people frequently enough; people whose whole life is centered around one thing, who don’t posess anything not related to it, who don’t talk about anything else, but I don’t think I’ve ever met one. Another difference seems to be that obsessors tend to focus on something more specific, while people who keep a deep interest over their lifetime tend to be interested in a broader subject, and will at various times be focused in on certain details of that topic, but without treating each with a greater enthusiasm than they show for the subject as a whole. An example could be perhaps one person who is really ‘into’ golf their whole life, and a person who is really ‘into’ Tiger Woods. The seccond person probably has interest in other golfing things only because of their connection with Tiger Woods, while the first person may be fairly interested in Tiger Woods because of his significance in the broader subject of golf. The first will watch many players, and will probably play golf himself because he enjoys it, while the seccond will only watch Tiger Woods play, and may try to learn how because he wants to be like Tiger Woods. The first might own one poster of Tiger Woods, perhaps, while the seccond will probably own several, and a key chain, and a calendar, and a hat,... and clippings of all the news or magazine articles about him.

I have never quite been able to understand the ‘serial obsessor’ types. For myself, whenever I discover something new I like it doesn’t overthrow my other likes. I also tend to learn and accumulate more slowly. As far as I can tell, the topics I like to talk about are pretty much always the same, and usually if I can’t stop talking about something it’s more likely to be a thought which is either troubling or which has suddenly hit me, rather than a thing or person, and doesn’t last more than a few days. I may often say similar things, or be reminded of the same things often, but they are of a wide variety, that is, unconnected to eachother.

I think part of what causes the fads of these obsessive people is that they are naturally intense and passionate, but are searching for a focus for these atributes, or rather, searching for themselves. Naturally everyone searches for himelf in some capacity, and in doing so will try out different interests, but these trials or phases are just more apparent in obsessive people because of their intense persuit.

The interesting thing to me is that with each new idea or topic they will passionately profess it is ‘SO true’ ‘SO right’ ‘SO wonderfull’ whatever it is, it is the only thing worthwhile. But how can they not notice that whatever is so right keeps changing, and therefore how can they be sure this time it is so right, since, after all, they have proven themselves wrong so often before, sometimes coming to despise their former tastes. Do they live so totally in the moment that they do not remember when they felt the same way about something else? That they cannot foresee this current feeling giving itself up for something different? How can one cope with this? How can one loose or reject or forget ones deepest passions? those things which give one individual identity and define one’s soul and approach to life? I am not meaning to sound criticle here so much as ask an honnest question, for I cannot immagine it myself. If I should ever stop liking fantasy, dragons, fairies, longing for Scottland, loosing myself if Beethoven’s music, wearing long skirts and loving to dress up in renaissance clothes, prefering long hair..... then I should feel as though I had ceased to be myself. These are so much a part of me, these are things which I feel intensely about, which I persue and love and preach, and surround myself with. How could I loose intrest in any of them without loosing part of myself? I am convinced I could not. But perhaps for some people this is not so. Perhaps they do not have a sense of losing themselves, or perhaps in spite of their intensity their obsessions never are as much a part of them as mine are to me? I do not know, though I should like to be able to understand. I may be entirely mis-percieving and mis-judging things in regards to such people. In any case, there are my observations. If you have any differing insights I would love to hear them.