As the study of what was once called oniomania evolves, we move semantically back toward the Greek root. In both popular and professional literature, the terms compulsive shopping, compulsive buying, and compulsive spending are often used interchangeably, but the behaviors they represent are in fact distinctly different (Nataraajan and Goff 1992). One may buy, after all, without shopping. or shop without buying. Because progress in understanding this disorder must in part depend on thinking and speaking clearly about it, most current researchers use the term compulsive buying and subscribe to an exceptionally specific definition proposed by McElroy and her colleagues (1994b).

Their choice of buying rather than shopping reflects the difference between a relatively narrow act-taking possession of something-and a far broader one. Shopping, the broader act, is largely the provenance of consumer behaviorists and retailers, who have evolved their study of it from an early emphasis on rational choice to today's focus on its experiential aspects. Their several concepts of shopping include a type of generalized search behavior (Hawkins, Best, and Coney 1989), a hedonic recreation (Holbrook and Hirshmann 1982), and a way to "spend" discretionary time (Arndt and Gronmo 1977). Viewed thus, as a kind of consumer ritual that enables the shopper to gather information for immediate or future use, shopping can be a way to satisfy many nonpurchase motives (Nataraajan and Goff, 1992).

Even spending, though closer to buying than shopping is, need not be synonymous with acquisition. Spending bespeaks the action of relinquishing funds rather than the gathering of material objects. Nataraajan and Goff (1992) observe that it may occur without either shopping or buying (except in a vicarious or surrogate sense), as when a parent gives money to children. In one solidly middle-income family I know of, the parents, in a desperate attempt to be loved, gave enough to their adult children that they literally bankrupted themselves.

These distinctions amount to more than hairsplitting. Semantic confusion can proliferate into typological and methodological errors, so it is essential that we speak with clarity when we consider the problem of compulsive buying. The most widely used definitional criteria (McElroy et al. 1994b) define the disorder, in essence, as a maladaptive preoccupation with buying or shopping, whether impulses or behavior, that either (a) is/are experienced as irresistible, intrusive, and/or senseless or (b) result in frequent buying of more than can be afforded, frequent buying of items that are not needed, or shopping for longer periods of time than intended. The buying preoccupations, impulses, or behaviors cause marked distress, are time-consuming, significantly interfere with social or occupational functioning, or result in financial problems, and they do not occur exclusively during periods of hypomania or mania. In short, the compulsive buyer is a person who allows shopping to destructively deflect resources-whether of time, energy, or money-from the fabrication of everyday life.

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