The emotional investment that goes into hoarding makes it much harder to overcome the disease.

The case of a Bronx man trapped for two days under a huge pile of magazines and catalogs is the latest example of a most curious behavior.

The cases never cease to fascinate: reclusive people trapped by their own accumulations, in rooms made unlivable by floor-to-ceiling heaps of newspapers, books and saved objects -- from twist ties to grand pianos.

Some pass into legend, like the Collyer brothers, "the hermit hoarders of Harlem," who, in 1947, were buried by the piles of urban junk that filled their four-story Harlem brownstone. But even less extreme examples, like that of the Bronx man rescued Monday after being trapped for two days under an avalanche of magazines and catalogs, haunt the public imagination.

Such compulsive hoarding is increasingly being recognized as a widespread behavioral disorder, one that is particularly acute in cities like New York, where space is at a premium. The pack rat behavior ranges from egregious cases that endanger lives to more commonplace collecting that resonates with anyone who has ever stacked magazines to read later or bought more shoes than the closet will hold.

One woman, for example, found throwing out a newspaper so unbearable that her therapist instructed her never to buy one again. Another could not pass a newsstand without thinking that one of the many periodicals on sale contained some bit of information that could change her life.

And a third, trying to explain why she had bought several puppets that she did not want or need from a television shopping channel, spoke of feeling sorry for the toys when no one else bid on them.

Hoarding tied to emotional investment in things

The emotional investment that goes into hoarding makes it much harder to overcome than landlords or housing court judges often understand, said Randy O. Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. A national authority on the disorder, he helped a group of medical, legal and social service agencies establish the New York City Task Force on Hoarding a year ago.

Similar groups exist in a dozen places, Frost said, including Seattle, Ottawa, Fairfax County, Va., and Dane County, Wis.

"I don't know if it's more of a problem in the city than elsewhere, but certainly the limited amount of space makes it come to a head," Frost added. "Most of this new attention is not coming from the mental health side of things, because many people with this problem don't seek help. It's coming from the housing side and services to the elderly."

Landlords, lawyers and social workers who deal with elderly tenants are often among the first to confront the problem.

Toby Golick, a clinical-law professor at Cardozo Law School, described the case of an elderly Manhattan man who rescued broken toys, discarded toasters and tattered umbrellas from the street until even his kitchen and bathroom were too crammed to use. The situation came to light only when the landlord could not squeeze in to fix a leaky faucet.

"He picked up things that he thought people were throwing away and still had life," said Golick, a founder of the hoarding task force, which set its second conference at Cardozo on Jan 21. "He was very upset that this was a disposable society and that people were very quick to disregard things of value."

In the end, she said, the the man's eviction was averted with a compromise: The bathroom and kitchen would be cleared, and passageways tunneled through the treasured junk in the other rooms. The turning point had been finding a resale shop that would accept some items, so the man would not have to throw them away.

Like the elderly tinkerer, the Bronx man, Patrice Moore, 43, saw treasure where others saw mainly trash. Interviewed Tuesday in the hospital where he was recovering from leg injuries suffered when his collection collapsed on him, he said he might sue the landlord over the loss of comic books and articles from the 1980s about his favorite entertainer, Michael Jackson.