"From rare books, valuable sculpture and paintings, the relics of saints, and porcelain and other objets d'art, through stamps, textiles, military ribbons, and shells, to baseball cards, teddy bears, and cookie jars, an amazing variety of objects have engaged and even obsessed collectors through the ages. In this captivating book the psychoanalyst Werner Muensterberger provides the first psychological examination of the emotional sources of the neverending longing for yet another collectible. Muensterberger's roster of driven acquisition-hunters includes the dedicated, the serious, and the infatuated, whose chronic restlessness can be curbed--and then merely temporarily--only by purchasing, discovering, receiving, or even stealing a new "find." In an easy, conversational style, the author discusses the eccentricities of heads of state, literary figures, artists, and psychoanalytic patients, all possessed by a need for magic relief from despair and helplessness--and for the self-healing implied in the phrase "I can't live without it!" Always empathetic, the sketches here are diverse indeed: Walter Benjamin, Mario Praz, Catherine the Great, Petrarch, Brunelleschi, and Jean de Berry, among others. The central part of the work explores in detail the personal circumstances and life history of three individuals: a contemporary collector, Martin G; the celebrated British book and manuscript collector Sir Thomas Phillipps, who wanted one copy of every book in the world; and the great French novelist Honore de Balzac, a compulsive collector of bric-a-brac who expressed his empathy for the acquisitive passions of his collector protagonist in Cousin Pons."--Jacket.