Concept
Anal erotism
The sexual pleasure bound to the anal zone and to the acts of holding back and expelling, one of the component drives of infantile sexuality. Freud described the anal zone as erotogenic in 1905; in ‘Character and Anal Erotism’ (1908) he traced orderliness, parsimony and obstinacy to its renunciation, in 1913 he placed it in an anal-sadistic organisation of the libido, and in 1917 he described the unconscious equivalence of faeces, gift, money, child and penis. Lou Andreas-Salomé read the anal prohibition as the child’s first encounter with renunciation and the origin of disgust.
Development
1908
introduced by Sigmund Freud
Freud counted the anal zone among the erotogenic zones in the Three Essays (1905) and named anal erotism in ‘Character and Anal Erotism’ (1908), where he derived orderliness, parsimony and obstinacy from its transformation.
In Character and Anal Erotism (1908);Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905)
1916
developed by Lou Andreas-Salomé
In »Anal« und »Sexual« (1916) Andreas-Salomé reads the training of excretion as the child’s first prohibition, through which the ego forms and the anal becomes the model of what is rejected and disgusting; she describes the female genital as ‘leased’ from the cloaca, a phrase Freud adopted in 1917.
In “Anal” and “Sexual” (1916);On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism (1917)
Relations
- 1908 introduced by Sigmund Freud
Freud counted the anal zone among the erotogenic zones in the Three Essays (1905) and named anal erotism in ‘Character and Anal Erotism’ (1908), where he derived orderliness, parsimony and obstinacy from its transformation.
- 1916 developed by Lou Andreas-Salomé
In »Anal« und »Sexual« (1916) Andreas-Salomé reads the training of excretion as the child’s first prohibition, through which the ego forms and the anal becomes the model of what is rejected and disgusting; she describes the female genital as ‘leased’ from the cloaca, a phrase Freud adopted in 1917.
Works
- 1905
Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality
Freud's three essays, published by Deuticke in 1905, deal with the sexual aberrations, with infantile sexuality and with the transformations of puberty. Together they argue that the sexual drive is present from infancy, that it is made up of component drives bound to erotogenic zones, and that it reaches its adult genital form only through a course of development. Later editions added an account of the pregenital organisations of the libido.
- 1908
Freud’s short paper connecting a triad of character traits, orderliness, parsimony and obstinacy, to a strong constitutional anal erotism in childhood that has been given up. The traits are read as reaction formations against, and sublimations of, the pleasure once taken in the anal zone.
- 1916
Andreas-Salomé argues that the training of excretion is the child’s first prohibition: for the first time the infant must turn against its own impulse, and the ego takes shape as mediator between outer restraint and inner urge. The anal comes to stand for everything rejected and dead, the model of all disgust, while remaining bodily close to the genital, which in women is as if “rented” from the cloaca. Confusing the two meanings lets disgust seep into sexuality. The paper also criticises Jung’s and Adler’s revisions of the libido theory, and Freud took up its image of the vagina in 1917.
- 1917
On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism
Freud traces how anal erotism is transformed: in the unconscious, faeces, money, gift, child and penis are treated as equivalents and can stand for one another. He links the wish for a child in women to penis envy, and grounds the equation of faeces and penis in the body itself, borrowing Lou Andreas-Salomé’s image of the vagina as “rented” from the rectum.
See also
People
References
- “Anal” and “Sexual”1916Evidence for a relation
- On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism1917Evidence for a relation
- Character and Anal Erotism1908Evidence for a relation
- Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality1905Evidence for a relation