Freud found that individuals with anal orientation of sexual life are dominated by certain personality traits, which are partly reactive formation against anal-erotic activity, and partly its sublimation. The main features of the anal type are: punctuality, frugality, obstinacy. In compulsive neurosis, too, certainly these tendencies intensify, so they need to be discussed in this section. In the development of relations between a child and the instinctual drives is very important training cleanliness. During this training the child first learns to take into account the environment and save or reject direct instinctual gratification.
The child acquires the ability to regulate basic instinctive necessities, at the same time “Almighty” had hitherto grown to become to some extent dependent on the will of the child. Anal character traits that have emerged in conflicts around the training reflects partly the instinct of resistance to the requirements of the environment, some humility to these requirements, but most are a compromise between two tendencies.
Leaning back to the habit of anal retention, sometimes is motivated by fear of loss, but as a rule, erotic pleasure. Accuracy and stubbornness are the more complex features. Accuracy is the development of obedience, stubbornness – the development of rebellion against the requirements of the environment with respect to the regulation of functions of excretion. At a certain constitution and circumstances surrounding stubbornness becomes so strong that the individual feels the need to do the exact opposite of what is required. A patient suffering from compulsive neurosis, usually slept during the day and stayed awake all night, as “seen sense” in doing ordinary things.
It was a kind of stubbornness rationalization of neurotic difficulties caused by the crowded state of his libido. Actually the word “stubbornness» (ob-stinare) expresses the idea of ”defending its position against someone.” Initially, it means only stubborn resistance, the will’s opposition to another person, then it implies the opposition of his will a superior hostile forces, and still later (because hostile forces dominate) – defending his position not just through force and guile, which gives a chance to the weak.
Stubbornness is a passive aggressiveness at the impossibility of its active manifestation. Initially, the child is able to annoy adults, clenching his sphincter. Later, “the power of weakness” can not have a real, magical nature. Then the “magic” are mixed up the superiority of “moral” superiority. The superego plays a crucial role in the later development of stubbornness. Those funds, which the child used to resist the superior forces of the adult, he uses then against his own superego.
The so-called stubbornness of adults is an attempt to use others as tools in the fight against the superego. Through other provocations against the injustice being implemented aspiration to moral superiority, which is necessary to improve self-esteem and create a counterweight to pressure the superego.
Moral superiority may be tested by the experience of unfair dealings with each other or coercion of the “unfair” adult to regret about the “misconduct”, which should make it to demonstrate love.
In other words, stubbornness, is intially a combative method of the weak, and later becomes a habit by the offensive in the struggle to maintain or restore self-esteem. The stubborn is overcrowded with narcissistic needs, his satisfaction can withstand anxiety and guilt. From this we can make the conclusion that stubbornness has an oral basis. However, it is primarily rooted in the anal stage and develops due to the experience acquired during the training cleanliness period.
Individuals who are afraid to fall into the trap of being abused and were disappointed, because of their narcissistic needs, of course, are more prone to stubbornness. Often obstinate behavior is due to a tendency to leave the road to retreat.
An alternative view is that, although there is stubbornness and conflicts between the child and his entourage during the training of cleanliness, it does not mean his anal nature. The above objection does not take into account the data of psychoanalysis, showing that the opposing forces of the instincts themselves draw their energy in the instinctual forces that change direction under the influence of the environment. Psychoanalysis provides ample evidence of stubborn obstinacy connection with anal sensation and allows us to consider this trait a source of anal-erotic pleasure.
Accuracy as a trait of character is the development of obedience. Neatness, punctuality, scruples, decency mean compliance of surrounding’s requirements from the act of defecation. In compulsive anal neurotic character traits that represent obedience education are revealed as reactive formations.
These are the “man-timer,” who in some cases is extremely not punctual, a person who likes cleanliness who in a surprising way is messy. Known psychoanalyst Abraham has described the nature of these contradictions, reflecting the ongoing fight against anti-cathexis example, there are individuals, scrupulously neat in the outer clothing, and just as raunchy with their underwear on, or those who hold their membership in a mess, but from time to time have the need to to direct a full order. This is also the habit of autoerotic long delay feces and then “immediately discharged.”
Some anal character traits represent the abstraction of instinct with means to a new target or new object. If the event is successful, it is spoken about sublimation. At compulsive neurotic sublimation fails, and “displacement” activity is directed to the same defensive struggle over frugality, obstinacy, accuracy, which was originally conducted around the anal impulses. There is interest from the mixing of the product and its process of defecation.
Regarding the first phenomenon, Freud showed that the replacement has a very complex relationship to the original. Regarding the term “feces” with respect to genital representations of the penis and child is less important in psychology of the compulsive neurotic than the connection of this notion with the idea of gifts, money and time.
To understand the relationship between money and feces in a compulsive neurotic, you must first understand the psychological meaning of “possession.”
The child learns to distinguish between it and the ego during the long process of passing the stage, which Freud called the “refined pleasure ego” when all delight, is perceived as an ego, and everything hurts, not as an ego. The basis of this classification is the idea: “Everything should be pleasant to swallow and spit out all the unpleasant need.” But there are good things that can not be taken by mouth. These things sooner or later are declared a property, which means: “I ought to take them into my mouth, but you can not. I declare them symbolic captured by mouth. ”
When the child is aware of the loss of their feces, that for him is a very valuable substance of his body, he feels, “It must be in my body, but it turned outward, and I can not put it back.” By something he calls “his”, he means: “I would like to have it inside the body, but can not. Therefore, I announce it in a symbolical way it is in my body. “In this way, the “property” means “things that really do not belong to the ego, but that should belong to him, things that are actually outside, but is symbolically inside.” Although they are located in the outer world, they are cathected “properties of ego.”
The property is usually provided with the attributes to its line-up. However, it is not easy to do with feces, which look the same in all human beings. Over time, the child learns about the existence of the money that adults treated as property, despite the fact that money always look the same, regardless of their owner.
Money, and feces have a common feature – they are properties that are not a part of individual and such property is inevitably lost. So the money are assessed and protected in the same manner as before the feces, as a property, which is constantly in danger of losing the quality of the ego. Both substances, in spite of their high value cause contempt because of their inherent. monotonous, non-specific nature. In fact, they like gold coins and shiny, new banknotes, which have preserved individualized.
Ferenczi, studying ways to shift, leading from feces to money, showed that shiny things and stones like before the white sand, but over time the money is perceived as a replacement. When the course is broken and the sublimation of instinctual desires concerning feces continue to determine attitudes about money, it becomes irrational. Then the money is made the object of pleasure (or punishment), that means, the replacement of feces rather than objectively useful thing: irrationally squander or congregate, often conflicting behavioral tendencies are combined in different ways.
Relation to time breaks in the anal personality, so it does with money. They can save every minute, and carelessly squander the years, only punctual, then amazingly unreliable.
Approval of Abraham, that “patients often save every minute and squander time in large quantities,” psychologist Garma illustrated with a striking case.
The patient, who had no fixed occupation, spent time in a neurotic activity, and dreams. Going to town, he always opened the window and waited for commuter trains. Hearing the train coming, he called her maid, who then opened the door, holding his coat at the ready. He grabbed his coat, ran headlong up the steps, rushed across the street to the station and jumped on a train at the time of departure. The whole procedure was a mere repetition of his childhood habit of waiting until the last moment in urinating his needs.
In a compulsive neurosis regression turns the patient’s attitude toward time toward money, in the arena, where his instinctive conflicts ignite. Sometimes you can fall into error, seeing the irrational, compulsive relationship to time. In fact, such behavior to a greater extent represents autoeroticism.
Reconstruction of the genetic relationship of time and feces is not as simple as money and feces. Therapist Harnik gathered a lot of anthropological data, which show that awareness of the passage of time, especially its ability to measure, is deeply rooted in anal eroticism. The frequency of bowel movements, while its implementation, the duration of this process, delaying his success are the circumstances by which the child acquires the notion of temporal ordering, the time dimension as a whole.
These observations do not imply that the notion of time is purchased only in the anal-erotic experience. Much more important is the role of kinesthetic sensations, transmission of the biological rhythms of the body (breathing, pulse). Anal experience is essential in a time dimension and the emergence of “schedules” as a mean of mastering reality .Neurotic disorders of “subjective time flow ” happen much in the bowl where unconscious conflicts are around the eroticism of deep sensitivity and balance, while violations of the practical use of time and temporal systems are as protection against unforeseen events characteristic of the typical compulsive neurosis with unconscious anal-sadistic conflicts.
Children’s attitude toward feces is often found as a constituent component in his later achievements. An individual can happily admire what he did, or, alternatively, with displeasure to take all his achievements, at last, it can fluctuate between two extremes, according to the outcome of his anal-instinctual conflicts.
Propensity for ruthless self-abasement patient was traced to the third year of life, when she underwent an intestinal disorder with symptoms of incontinence. The disease occurred only after mastering the skills of the toilet. Since her illness she was convinced that she does not do anything right. Another patient, a writer, dreamed, as the galleys of her book are extruded from a small hole.
Anal inhibition, which always consists of two components, fear of loss and joy of the new erogenous pleasure can mix at another site. Greed and mania for collecting, as well as waste, are correlative determinants in the infantile attitude toward feces.
Mixing cathexes from defecation to speech and mental activity sometimes is given with irrational modes of deterrence and a “spillover” of words and thoughts.
This is observed when braking the respective roles and their irrational hypercathexis.
In addition, the behavior of individuals is always imbued with anal manifestations of sadism or reactive constructs against sadism. The fact that the child finds urinating in the stopband narcissistic satisfaction of his ability to control the sphincters is also a source of sublimation and reaction formations. The thirst for power may come from a sense of power, which is accompanied by controlling sphincters. Desired power is achieved through self-control or other control, and overall desire for this power is determined by fear of loss of self esteem.
At compulsive neurotics are often activated many other conflicts, once associated with anal eroticism. Denial of pleasure for the sake of the objects of love for them or for fear of them is the main achievement of the training cleanliness. The individual learns to give, while in the oral period, his interest was focused mainly on the receipt. Disturbances in the oral period, are the cause of subsequent violations in relation to objects, as hindered the balance between giving and taking.
In the classic work of Abraham conflicts around the anal eroticism is also attributed to less important features: for example, a tendency to look at all “from the back (dark) side” (the basis of many compulsive symptoms); fear of “undertakings” that determine delay as possible of any new activity, although the initiated activities is difficult to suspend by such individual; tendency to force others to do everything for themselves, if in the history of an infantile anality figured enema, and the tendency of all to decide for himself if the requirements to regulate the function of the anal aroused protest in childhood. This is also the tendency to make many things at the same time in order to save time, due to autoerotic games during defecation and often finds its continuation in the form of compulsive reading while sitting on the toilet, meaning the restoration of the lost material.
Examined personality traits are typical of compulsive neurotic. None compulsive neurotic is unable to rationally deal with money and time, although the nature and extent of difficulties varies greatly.
