Adults Who Collect Dolls: Not Just Fun But Also Therapeutic

Elizabeth Kraft Taylor, author of Three Jews Walked Into a Shopping Center, recalls her infatuation with dolls. “It started when I was about 30 years old. My dolls were called Gene Marshall. They were created to show designer clothes. It was the clothes above all that was the important part.”

In time, Taylor invested in three different display cases for her dolls and purchased outfits for them online, saying, “I loved them for some time, and then the clutter of them started to drive me crazy, so I donated them….”

Taylor is not alone. The United Federation of Doll Clubs says it is one of the largest hobby groups in the world, surpassed only by stamps and miniatures. The Federation itself has 16,000 members worldwide. In comparison, the American Ceramic Circle, which reaches outside the United States as well, has no more than 400 members. This makes the 16,000 members of the Federation most impressive. There must be many times that many adults who do not belong to the Federation but collect dolls.

Psychological Factors Behind Adult Doll Collecting

Angelie Ignacio and Gerald Cupchik (2020) from the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto at Scarborough studied the psychological factors behind the widespread phenomenon of adults who collect dolls. Gerald Cupchik is the author of The Aesthetics of Emotion: Up the Down Staircase of the Mind-Body (Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction) (2016).

The Ignacio and Cupchik experiments were tested online and in the laboratory. The researchers analyzed strong and weak self-concepts in relationship to play. Both approaches used a 10-question survey evaluating the sense of self. The laboratory portion additionally used undergraduate students to engage in doll play for observation and analysis by the investigators.

Factor analysis was used to determine whether the participants displayed an insecure or secure sense of self. This method narrows down a sizable number of variables into understandable data that can be utilized. Using it, the researchers found that the hallmarks of an insecure self were self-doubt and an unstable identity manifest by a poor sense of oneself as a person. On the other hand, those who tested in the secure self group recognized their strengths and had a higher tolerance for life’s negative events, partly related to a strong sense of who they were.

The investigator’s assumptions were twofold. One was that doll collectors with a strong self-concept would not be troubled by unsettled emotional issues, which would be reflected in their play. The second was that adult doll collectors with weak self-concepts would use doll play to resolve internal conflicts, which then acts as a kind of self-therapy.

The Results

Using the data they collected, they found that individuals with a secure sense of self will use doll play and world-building (creating a fictional world) as a means to be creative. On the opposite end of the spectrum, those with an insecure sense of self will utilize these same activities to resolve internal tensions and engage in self-therapy.

What is interesting to me is the authors' finding in the insecure self group. In it, the dolls were utilized by the collector as a way to find healing for themselves. This finding suggests unresolved issues within their lives. Freud and Muensterberger, two leaders in the field before this century, espoused issues of this nature as a reason to collect. It may play a part in doll collecting by adults as well. Whether it contributes to other collecting narratives has yet to be determined. A certainty is that collecting stimulates the pleasure center, and it is only logical that engaging in self-therapy would be expected likewise to arouse the pleasure center because knowing oneself is a benefit and, thereby, a positive neurobiological force.

Ignacio and Cupchik published another paper a year after the first (2021), which addressed the therapeutic benefits of adult doll play. Here, they emphasized that the connection between collector and doll is characterized by what the doll represents to the collector, not the doll itself. For example, Ms. Taylor, who collected Gene Marshall dolls, was interested in fashion, and her dolls could be used to express a fashion statement through play. I conjecture that the doll was emblematic of her own image, that of a well-dressed woman confident in herself.