WITHOUT MY COLLECTION, WHO AM I?

BY SHIRLEY M. MUELLER

Originally published by Fine Art Connoisseur; September/October 2026

My collection is flying away. It is Chinese export porcelain, made in China and exported to the West. First, there was a sale at Christie’s in New York City, then one at Sotheby’s nearby. Now a specialist from Sotheby’s is coming to pick up one of my choice pieces for the America250 exhibition at his firm’s Manhattan headquarters. It’s a platter that belonged to George and Martha Washington. The hitch is that I have to assign a price for it to appear in the exhibition. That is a heavy burden to carry: I do not want to sell the platter because I have invested not only money but also time in it. Jennifer L. Mass, Ph.D., then working at Winterthur’s Scientific Research & Analysis Laboratory, and I conducted a study of the platter, demonstrating its authenticity. 1 (Warning: there are fakes floating about.) That process truly cemented my affection for this piece.

The loss of objects from my collection to sales, and now to an exhibition with a potential sale, brings me to a stark realization: Who am I without my collection? It has provided me with a place in the world for many years. Through it, I have established friendships and contacts. The interested members of relevant organizations have visited my home. I have given presentations on it worldwide and have published widely in the field. My collection is me. This question is not as melodramatic as it sounds. For many like me, a collection is not merely an accumulation of objects. It is a scaffolding for identity, a framework through The author in 2012, when she was invited to speak at the Nanchang International Conference; the trip included an excursion to Jingdezhen, where this was taken by an unidentified photographer. which we understand ourselves and are understood by others. 2 This means that the loss of a collection can feel like a profound personal rupture, rather than a simple series of transactions.

THE SELF-DEFINING OBJECT

The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio wrote about the “extended self,” the idea that our sense of who we are is not confined within us but extends outward into the objects, relationships, and environments that carry our memories and reinforce our sense of continuity.3 Psychologist William James identified something similar more than a century ago, writing that a person’s self is the sum total of all that they can call their own, including their possessions.4 These are not poetic metaphors. They reflect realities in how the brain constructs identity. When someone assembles a collection, the brain’s reward circuitry, anchored in dopaminergic pathways, reinforces the behavior repeatedly — over years and decades. Each acquisition, each piece of knowledge gained, each connection made through the objects, lays down neural pathways that associate the collection with feelings of competence, pleasure, and belonging. Over time, the collection becomes encoded in autobiographical memory as deeply as any relationship or life event. It is not just something we own. It signifies who we are. The collection creates a community, vocabulary, and a set of credentials. In my case, Chinese export porcelain gave me an expertise that opened doors across continents and positioned me within a network of people who share this specialized passion.

That placement is not incidental to identity; it is identity. The collection was the lens through which others saw me and through which I saw myself. The neurological basis for this is rooted in what researchers call the “default mode network,” the brain’s system for self-referential thought and autobiographical narrative. Studies using functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) indicate that when people reflect on objects they own and deeply value, the same brain regions activate as when they think about their personal traits and memories.5 The objects are not separate from the self. They are integrated into it.

THE SCAFFOLDING SHIFTS

What happens, then, when the collection begins to disperse? The answer, for many collectors, resembles grief. Psychologists studying possessions and loss have found that the dissolution of a deeply held collection can trigger responses similar to bereavement, including disorientation, a loss of narrative coherence, and what could be called “identity disruption,” the sensation that a defining chapter of life has closed without a replacement story ready to begin. This is so much different than losing one piece due to a catastrophe (like the collapse of a glass shelf in one of my cabinets). Nearly my entire collection will soon be gone, a much greater loss. Then I will no longer possess my cherished porcelains, each with its own memories.

Yet the neuropsychological picture is not entirely bleak. The brain is remarkably plastic. Identities do not dissolve; they reorganize. The knowledge accumulated through a lifetime of collecting does not vanish when the objects do. The expertise, the relationships, the published work, and the presentations given in cities around the world remain. What the collector must find is a way to allow that accumulated self to migrate into new forms of expression.

THE OPTIONS BEFORE US

For those facing the dispersal of a defining collection, several constructive paths present themselves. The first is documentation and legacy. The act of writing about a collection, cataloging it, and contributing to scholarship in the field transforms the collection from a private possession into a public contribution. A George and Martha Washington platter exhibited at Sotheby’s is no longer simply something you own; it becomes something you have given to history. That is a different kind of ownership, but a profound one. The second path is mentorship and transmission. The knowledge inside a collector’s mind is itself a collection, one that cannot be auctioned. Sharing that knowledge with younger collectors, institutions, or educational programs extends that identity into the future rather than surrendering it. Research in positive psychology consistently finds that acts of generational transmission, passing on expertise and passion, are among the most potent sources of meaning available in the later chapters of life. The third path, and perhaps the most neurologically grounded, is to recognize that the self was never solely a collection. It was the curiosity that assembled it, the discipline that sustained it, the intellect that understood it, and the generosity that shared it. Those qualities preceded the first acquisition and will outlast the disposition. The collection was always a portrait of the collector, not the other way around. In a home where the shelves are emptier, where a platter that once graced George and Martha Washington’s table is now on its way to Sotheby’s, the question “Who am I without my collection?” deserves a careful and honest answer. I’m the person who found it, learned it, lived with it, wrote about it, and shared it. I am the accumulation of every conversation it sparked, every friendship it forged, every mind it opened, including my own.

The objects may disperse. The self that built the collection does not.

SHIRLEY M. MUELLER, M.D., is a board-certified neurologist and psychiatrist who explores the neuropsychological forces that drive collecting, hoarding, and the human relationship with objects. She is the author of Inside the Head of a Collector: Neuropsychological Forces at Play and writes for Psychology Today and other publications.

NOTES

1 Shirley M. Mueller and Jennifer L. Mass, “Using Science to Unmask Fake Order of the Cincinnati Decoration on Chinese Export Porcelain,” The Magazine Antiques, 178, no. 4 (July 2011): 82−84.

2 Sarah V. Bentley, Kim Peters, S. Alexander Haslam, and Katharine H. Greenaway, “Construction at Work: Multiple Identities Scaffold Professional Identity Development in Academia,” Frontiers in Psychology 10 (2019): 628.

3 Antonio Damasio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, New York: Pantheon Books, 2010.

4 William James, The Principles of Psychology, New York: Henry Holt, 1890, vol. 1, 291.

5 Edward A. Vessel, G. Gabrielle Starr, and Nava Rubin, “Art Reaches Within: Aesthetic Experience, the Self and the Default Mode Network,” Frontiers in Neuroscience 7 (2013): 258.