Inside a collector’s mind

VOLTES V again takes center stage at the annual gathering of toy fans and collectors. the Philippine toys, Hobbies and Collectible Convention (toyconph) is Asia’s biggest and long-running convention for toys and collectibles, cosplay, comics, gaming and digital entertainment, providing a good venue for fans and collectors.

Now on its 19th year, Toycon is a much-awaited event that celebrates the common love for all things creative, innovative, and collectible.

Some of the event’s highlights include the biggest Voltes V licensing and merchandise exhibit, like T-shirts, posters and several kinds of Voltes V figures plus the celebrity appearances of the stars of GMA’S Voltes V: Legacy.

The cartoon series was about an alien race of horned humans from the planet Boazania out to conquer

Earth. It was up to Voltes V to defeat the Boazanians’ giant robots, known as beast fighters, sent to destroy the planet.

Voltes V may not be provocative and radical in the traditional sense, but its story does carry the idea of revolution and resistance. Boazania was also under dictatorial rule from a despotic emperor, who faced an uprising from Boazanians who were discriminated against and enslaved simply because they had no horns.

In 1979, shortly before the series finale, then President Ferdinand Marcos issued a directive banning Voltes V and other similarly themed anime series due to concerns about “excessive violence”.

The directive also led to speculations at the time that the series was also taken off the air due to its revolutionary undertones.

Aside from my Voltes V shirts and mugs at home, I also have my collections of frog items, which I started gathering in December 2001 and have been featured in some shows.

I have currently more than a thousand of them scattered all over my house and office, a frog memorabilia museum of sort: toys, toiletries, plates, pillows, vases, incense holders, candles, mugs, keychains, wood crafts, figurines, jars, socks, chimes, and several others made out of varied materials such as terracotta, wood, glass, clay, cement, plastic, and ceramics.

In general, collectors have a sense of pride about their possessions and they experience joy in displaying the items to others who appreciate them.

As collectors seek objects of desire, they usually keep their collection organized, feel satisfaction when adding to it, and budget their time and money.

Most people collect stuff because it’s fun, while others enjoy the social aspects of collecting.

There are some that collect to preserve and honor the past for future generations to enjoy and learn from.

Most collectors choose to collect simply because it makes them happy. Happier people are healthier people. They’re more productive and have higher energy levels.

Neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud floated an extreme theory wherein he associated collecting in adulthood with difficulties or unresolved conflict during toilet training in childhood.

In Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development, he said the desire, and the urge to collect, begins the moment you enter this world.

Object fixation is related to the anal-retentive stage in childhood (from age 18 months to three years).

If certain issues are not resolved

at the appropriate stage, fixations can occur. A fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain “stuck” in

this stage.

If parents are too strict or begin toilet training too early, Freud believed that an anal-retentive personality develops in which the individual is stringent, orderly, rigid, and obsessive.

He suggested that the act of collecting directly correlates to the

“traumatic” experiences of losing our “possessions” during toilet training. To make up for this traumatic loss, Freud believed that the collector is trying to exert control and regain their lost years.

He suggested that “Anal Retentive” people are obsessively organized and neat, which serves as a

means of control and comfort in one’s life. There’s a sense of satisfaction and relaxation that comes from the constant arranging and re-arranging of items in their collection.

Collection, Freud said, is the “redirection of surplus libido onto an inanimate object.”

Freud, himself, was a collector of

Greek vases, Chinese art, and other antiquities.

Psychiatrist Shirley Mueller said in “Inside the Head of a Collector” that collecting provides solace and structure, and ways that we can still be productive doing something we can enjoy.

Amassing a collection can become

a transcendent experience for some, one that non-collectors might not understand.