Anal Erotic Character traits.

ERHAPS the most astonishing of Freud's findingsand certainly the one that has evoked the liveliest incredulity, repugnance, and opposition-was his discovery that certain traits of character may become profoundly modified as the result of sexual excitations experienced by the infant in the region of the anal canal.I imagine that every one on first hearing this statement finds it almost inconceivably grotesque, a fact which well illustrates the remoteness of the unconscious from the conscious mind, for of the truth of the statement itself no one who has undertaken any serious psycho-analytical study can have any doubt.There are, however, two biological considerations, relating respectively to the ontogenetic and phylogenetic antiquity of the physiological process concerned, that should render the statement made above a little less unthinkable, if not actually plausible.One is that the act of defaecation constitutes one of the two greatest personal interests of the infant during the first year of life, a fact which should carry due weight to any student of genetic psychology, for the basis of that science is the principle that all later tendencies and interests are derived from earlier ones, either directly or indirectly; with this may be correlated the circumstance that the alimentary function in general is the most constant preoccupation of all animals other than man.The other is that many of the sexual processes and organs have been derived from the excretory ones, in both the individual and the race, and are very largely modelled on them; in the lower animals, for instance,-and, indeed, partly so even in man-common ducts are used for both.That the primordial function of excretion, and the fundamental association between it and sexuality, should result in far-reaching effects on mental development should not, therefore, be altogether surprising.The subject should logically be prefaced by a discussion of the facts of anal erotism itself, and even the question of infantile sexuality in general, but so many discussions and illustrations of this are now to be found in the literature that I can deal with the matter here very briefly.The salient features, as elucidated by psycho-analysis, are: The mucous membrane 261