Freud - Complete Works (337 page)

   I must expressly state that I
cannot claim the same general validity for this formula as I have
done for the others. As far as I can see, it applies neither to all
the symptoms of a given case nor to all cases. On the contrary, it
is not hard to adduce cases in which the impulses belonging to the
opposite sexes have found separate symptomatic expression, so that
the symptoms of heterosexuality and those of homosexuality can be
as clearly distinguished from each other as the phantasies
concealed behind them. Nevertheless, the condition of things stated
in the ninth formula is common enough, and, when it occurs,
important enough to deserve special emphasis. It seems to me to
mark the highest degree of complexity to which the determination of
a hysterical symptom can attain, and one may therefore only expect
to find it in a neurosis which has persisted for a long time and
within which a great deal of organization has taken
place.¹

   The bisexual nature of hysterical
symptoms, which can in any event be demonstrated in numerous cases,
is an interesting confirmation of my view that the postulated
existence of an innate bisexual disposition in man is especially
clearly visible in the analysis of psychoneurotics.² An
exactly analogous state of affairs occurs in the same field when a
person who is masturbating tries in his conscious phantasies to
have the feelings both of the man and of the woman in the situation
which he is picturing. Further counterparts are to be found in
certain hysterical attacks in which the patient simultaneously
plays both parts in the underlying sexual phantasy. In one case
which I observed, for instance, the patient pressed her dress up
against her body with one hand (as the woman), while she tried to
tear it off with the other (as the man). This simultaneity of
contradictory actions serves to a large extent to obscure the
situation, which is otherwise so plastically portrayed in the
attack, and it is thus well suited to conceal the unconscious
phantasy that is at work.

  
¹
Sadger (1907) has recently discovered this
formula independently in his own psycho-analyses. He, however,
maintains that it has general validity.

  
²
Cf. my
Three Essays
.

Hysterical Phantasies And Their Relation To Bisexuality

1939

   In psycho-analytic treatment it
is very important to be prepared for a symptom’s having a
bisexual meaning. We need not then be surprised or misled if a
symptom seems to persist undiminished although we have already
resolved one of its sexual meanings; for it is still being
maintained by the - perhaps unsuspected - one belonging to the
opposite sex. In the treatment of such cases, moreover, one may
observe how the patient avails himself, during the analysis of the
one sexual meaning, of the convenient possibility of constantly
switching his associations, as though on to an adjoining track,
into the field of the contrary meaning.

1940

CHARACTER AND ANAL EROTISM

(1908)

1941

Intentionally left blank

1942

CHARACTER AND ANAL EROTISM

Among those whom we try to help by our
psycho-analytic efforts we often come across a type of person who
is marked by the possession of a certain set of character-traits,
while at the same time our attention is drawn to the behaviour in
his childhood of one of his bodily functions and the organ
concerned in it. I cannot say at this date what particular
occasions began to give me an impression that there was some
organic connection between this type of character and this
behaviour of an organ, but I can assure the reader that no
theoretical expectation played any part in that impression.

   Accumulated experience has so
much strengthened my belief in the existence of such a connection
that I am venturing to make it the subject of a communication.

   The people I am about to describe
are noteworthy for a regular combination of the three following
characteristics. They are especially
orderly
,
parsimonious
and
obstinate
. Each of these words
actually covers a small group or series of interrelated
character-traits. ‘Orderly’ covers the notion of bodily
cleanliness, as well as of conscientiousness in carrying out small
duties and trustworthiness. Its opposite would be
‘untidy’ and ‘neglectful’. Parsimony may
appear in the exaggerated form of avarice; and obstinacy can go
over into defiance, to which rage and revengefulness are easily
joined. The two latter qualities - parsimony and obstinacy are
linked with each other more closely than they are with the first -
with orderliness. They are, also, the more constant element of the
whole complex. Yet it seems to me incontestable that all three in
some way belong together.

Character And Anal Erotism

1943

   It is easy to gather from these
people’s early childhood history that they took a
comparatively long time to overcome their infantile
incontinentia alvi
[faecal incontinence], and that even in
later childhood they suffered from isolated failures of this
function. As infants, they seem to have belonged to the class who
refuse to empty their bowels when they are put on the pot because
they derive a subsidiary pleasure from defaecating;¹ for they
tell us that even in somewhat later years they enjoyed holding back
their stool, and they remember - though more readily about their
brothers and sisters than about themselves - doing all sorts of
unseemly things with the faeces that had been passed. From these
indications we infer that such people are born with a sexual
constitution in which the erotogenicity of the anal zone is
exceptionally strong. But since none of these weaknesses and
idiosyncracies are to be found in them once their childhood has
been passed, we must conclude that the anal zone had lost its
erotogenic significance in the course of development; and it is to
be suspected that the regularity with which this triad of
properties is present in their character may be brought into
relation with the disappearance of their anal erotism.

   I know that no one is prepared to
believe in a state of things so long as it appears to be
unintelligible and to offer no angle from which an explanation can
be attempted. But we can at least bring the underlying factors
nearer to our understanding by the help of the postulates I laid
down in my
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
in 1905.
I there attempted to show that the sexual instinct of man is highly
complex and is put together from contributions made by numerous
constituents and component instincts. Important contributions to
‘sexual excitation’ are furnished by the peripheral
excitations of certain specially designated parts of the body (the
genitals, mouth, anus, urethra), which therefore deserve to be
described as ‘erotogenic zones’. But the amounts of
excitation coming in from these parts of the body do not all
undergo the same vicissitudes, nor is the fate of all of them the
same at every period of life. Generally speaking, only a part of
them is made use of in sexual life; another part is deflected from
sexual aims and directed towards others - a process which deserves
the name of ‘sublimation’. During the period of life
which may be called the period of ‘sexual latency’ -
i.e. from the completion of the fifth year to the first
manifestations of puberty (round about the eleventh year) -
reaction-formations, or counter-forces, such as shame, disgust and
morality, are created in the mind. They are actually formed at the
expense of the excitations proceeding from the erotogenic zones,
and they rise like dams to oppose the later activity of the sexual
instincts. Now anal erotism is one of the components of the
instinct which, in the course of development and in accordance with
the education demanded by our present civilization, have become
unserviceable for sexual aims. It is therefore plausible to suppose
that these character-traits of orderliness, parsimony and
obstinacy, which are so often prominent in people who were formerly
anal erotics, are to be regarded as the first and most constant
results of the sublimation of anal erotism.²

  
¹
Cf. Freud,
Three Essays on the Theory of
Sexuality
(1905
d
).

  
²
Since it is precisely the remarks in my
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
about the anal
erotism of infants that have particularly scandalized
uncomprehending readers, I venture at this point to interpolate an
observation for which I have to thank a very intelligent patient.
‘A friend of mine’, he told me, ‘who has read
your
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
, was talking
about the book. He entirely agreed with it, but there was one
passage, which - though of course he accepted and understood its
meaning like that of the rest - struck him as so grotesque and
comic that he sat down and laughed over it for a quarter of an
hour. This passage ran: "One of the clearest signs of
subsequent eccentricity or nervousness is to be seen when a baby
obstinately refuses to empty his bowels when he is put on the pot -
that is, when his nurse wants him to - and holds back that function
till he himself chooses to exercise it. He is naturally not
concerned with dirtying the bed, he is only anxious not to miss the
subsidiary pleasure attached to defaecating." The picture of
this baby sitting on the pot and deliberating whether he would put
up with a restriction of this kind upon his personal freedom of
will, and feeling anxious, too, not to miss the pleasure attached
to defaecating, - this caused my friend the most intense amusement.
About twenty minutes afterwards, as we were having some cocoa, he
suddenly remarked without any preliminary: "I say, seeing the
cocoa in front of me has suddenly made me think of an idea that I
always had when I was a child. I used always to pretend to myself
that I was the cocoa-manufacturer Van Houten" (he pronounced
the name Van "Hauten") "and that I possessed a great
secret for the manufacture of this cocoa. Everybody was trying to
get hold of this secret that was a boon to humanity but I kept it
carefully to myself. I don’t know why I should have hit
specially upon Van Houten. Probably his advertisements impressed me
more than any others." Laughing, and without thinking at the
time that my words had any deep meaning, I said: "Wann
haut’n die Mutter?" [‘When does mother
smack?’ The first two words in the German phrase are
pronounced exactly like ‘Van Houten’.] It was only
later that I realized that my pun in fact contained the key to the
whole of my friend’s sudden childhood recollection, and I
then recognized it as a brilliant example of a screen-phantasy. My
friend’s phantasy, while keeping to the situation, actually
involved (the nutritional process) and making use of phonetic
associations ("Kakao" [‘cocoa’. -
‘Kaka’ is the common German nursery word for
‘faeces’] and "Wann haut’n"), pacified
his sense of guilt by making a complete reversal in the content of
his recollection: there was a displacement from the back of the
body to the front, excreting food became taking food in, and
something that was shameful and had to be concealed became a secret
that was a boon to humanity. I was interested to see how, only a
quarter of an hour after my friend had fended the phantasy off
(though, it is true, in the comparatively mild form of raising an
objection on formal grounds) - he was, quite involuntarily,
presented with the most convincing evidence by his own
unconscious.’

Character And Anal Erotism

1944

   The intrinsic necessity for this
connection is not clear, of course, even to myself. But I can make
some suggestions which may help towards an understanding of it.
Cleanliness, orderliness and trustworthiness give exactly the
impression of a reaction-formation against an interest in what is
unclean and disturbing and should not be part of the body.
(‘Dirt is matter in the wrong place.’)¹ To relate
obstinacy to an interest in defaecation would seem no easy task;
but it should be remembered that even babies can show self-will
about parting with their stool, as we have seen above, and that it
is a general practice in children’s upbringing to administer
painful stimuli to the skin of the buttocks which is linked up with
the erotogenic anal zone - in order to break their obstinacy and
make them submissive. An invitation to a caress of the anal zone is
still used to-day, as it was in ancient times, to express defiance
or defiant scorn, and thus in reality signifies an act of
tenderness that has been overtaken by repression. An exposure of
the buttocks represents a softening down of this spoken invitation
into a gesture; in Goethe’s
Götz von Berlichingen
both words and gesture are introduced at the most appropriate point
as an expression of defiance.

   The connections between the
complexes of interest in money and of defaecation, which seem so
dissimilar, appear to be the most extensive of all. Every doctor
who has practised psycho-analysis knows that the most refractory
and long-standing cases of what is described as habitual
constipation in neurotics can be cured by that form of treatment.
This is less surprising if we remember that that function has shown
itself similarly amenable to hypnotic suggestion. But in
psycho-analysis one only achieves this result if one deals with the
patients’ money complex and induces them to bring it into
consciousness with all its connections. It might be supposed that
the neurosis is here only following as indication of common usage
in speech, which calls a person who keeps too careful a hold on his
money ‘dirty’ or ‘filthy’.² But this
explanation would be far too superficial. In reality, wherever
archaic modes of thought have predominated or persist - in the
ancient civilizations, in myths, fairy tales and superstitions, in
unconscious thinking, in dreams and in neuroses - money is brought
into the most intimate relationship with dirt. We know that the
gold which the devil gives his paramours turns into excrement after
his departure, and the devil is certainly nothing else than the
personification of the repressed unconscious instinctual
life.³ We also know about the superstition which connects the
finding of treasure with defaecation, and everyone is familiar with
the figure of the ‘shitter of ducats
[
Dukatenscheisser
]’.
⁴
Indeed, even according to ancient
Babylonian doctrine gold is ‘the faeces of Hell’
(Mammon =
ilu manman
⁵
).
Thus in following the usage of language, neurosis, here as
elsewhere, is taking words in their original, significant sense,
and where it appears to be using a word figuratively it is usually
simply restoring its old meaning.

  
¹
[In English in the original.]

  
²
[The English ‘filthy’ as well
as the German ‘
filzig
’ appears in the
original.]

  
³
Compare hysterical possession and demoniac
epidemics.

  
⁴
[A
term vulgarly used for a wealthy spendthrift.]

  
⁵
Cf.
Jeremias (1904, 115
n
.).’"Mamon"
("Mammon") is "Manman" in Babylonian and is
another name for Nergal, the God of the Underworld. According to
Oriental mythology, which has passed over into popular legends and
fairy tales, gold is the excrement of Hell.’

Character And Anal Erotism

1945

   It is possible that the contrast
between the most precious substance known to men and the most
worthless, which they reject as waste matter
(‘refuse’¹), has led to this specific
identification of gold with faeces.

   Yet another circumstance
facilitates this equation in neurotic thought. The original erotic
interest in defaecation is, as we know, destined to be extinguished
in later years. In those years the interest in money makes its
appearance as a new interest which had been absent in childhood.
This makes it easier for the earlier impulsion, which is in process
of losing its aim, to be carried over to the newly emerging
aim.

   If there is any basis in fact for
the relation posited here between anal erotism and this triad of
character-traits, one may expect to find no very marked degree of
‘anal character’ in people who have retained the anal
zone’s erotogenic character in adult life, as happens, for
instance, with certain homosexuals. Unless I am much mistaken, the
evidence of experience tallies quite well on the whole with this
inference.