Freud, “Character and Anal Erotism” (1908) (II)

In the last entry, I discussed Freud’s observation that adults possessing a specific suite of character traits — who are “orderly [ordentlich], parsimonious [sparsam], and obstinate [eigensinnig]” (169) — were as infants inordinately preoccupied with the anal zone and its pleasures. And Freud speculates that this is no accident — that perhaps “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” (170).

But what sort of relation does Freud identity between the infantile behavior and the mature traits that finally depose that behavior — beyond, that is, this abstract metaphor of “deposition”? For Freud, it seems, the adult’s character traits — habits of thought, aesthetic and moral attitudes, and patterns of action — are something like crystallizations, either of the original sexual drive, or of some characteristic reaction to that drive. The article’s closing lines extrapolate from the analysis of anal characters to a more generic hypothesis regarding the origin of all adult “traits” in specific phases of the sexual drive:

“We can at any rate lay down a formula for the way in which character in its final shape is formed out of the constituent instincts: the permanent character-traits are either unchanged prolongations [unveränderte Fortsetzungen] of the original instincts [ursprünglichen Triebe], or sublimations [Sublimierungen] of those instincts, or reaction-formations [Reaktionsbildurigen] against them” (175)

The first of the three possibilities, that of “unchanged prolongation,” appears slightly misleading in the way it is phrased. After all, surely the “original drive” must be changed in some respect — if only as a conversion of drive into trait. But even this understates the implied change, which — following the action of repression — the adult in principle does not consciously link to the original drive, in part because of its “abstraction” from the organ and the behaviors connected to it. Thus the nominally “unchanged prolongation” — say, the infant’s drive to obstinacy, which becomes the adult’s characterological obstinacy — nonetheless involves some types of change: (a) from drive to trait; (b) from spontaneous, conscious expression, to unconscious vehicle; and, of course, (c) from concrete behaviors surrounding the “zone” in question, to an abstract orientation touching on all sectors of life.

The other two possibilities — that traits may also constitute “sublimations” of, or “reaction-formations” against, the “original instincts” — are, despite the simplicity of Freud’s expressions, also difficult to grasp precisely. In this essay, Freud identifies three paradigmatic reaction-formations, namely, those which culture inculcates as necessary attitudes during the child’s latency phase.

“During the period of life which may be called the period of ‘sexual latency’…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” (171, my italics)

In the earlier Three Essays on Sexuality, Freud had described the process in nearly identical language:

“It is during this period of total or only partial latency that are built up the mental forces which are later to impede the course of the sexual instinct and, like dams, restrict its flow—disgust, feelings of shame and the claims of aesthetic and moral ideals” (177)

Hence shame, disgust, morality, and — Freud adds — aesthetic ideals, as more or less prominent “traits” of adults, are hardly “prolongations” of sexual drives; they are rather structures established to restrict or suppress these (inadmissible) drives. And indeed, at least a portion of of the anal “character” seems to belong among these defensive structures: “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” (172). Though Freud does not say this explicitly, it seems to follow from his account that the strength and persistence of these traits in the adult is a measure of the intensity of his original interest in the anal zone — uninhibitedly felt and expressed during infancy — against which those traits must contend. The anal type’s need for cleanliness is exactly as great and urgent as the “unseemly" excitations and pleasures it forced back from awareness.