Article
On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism
Über Triebumsetzungen, insbesondere der Analerotik
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.
What it shows
- 1916
Lou Andreas-Salomé developed Anal erotism
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.
- 1917
Lou Andreas-Salomé influenced Sigmund Freud
In ‘On Transformations of Instinct as Exemplified in Anal Erotism’ (1917) Freud adopted Andreas-Salomé’s image of the vagina as ‘leased’ from the rectum and cited her »Anal« und »Sexual« (Imago, 1916) in a footnote.