The Activity of the Anal Zone.—­Like the lip zone the anal zone is, through its position, adapted to conduct the sexuality to the other functions of the body.  It should be assumed that the erogenous significance of this region of the body was originally very large.  Through psychoanalysis one finds, not without surprise, the many transformations that are normally undertaken with the usual excitations emanating from here, and that this zone often retains for life a considerable fragment of genital irritability.[14] The intestinal catarrhs so frequent during infancy produce intensive irritations in this zone, and we often hear it said that intestinal catarrh at this delicate age causes “nervousness.”  In later neurotic diseases they exert a definite influence on the symptomatic expression of the neurosis, placing at its disposal the whole sum of intestinal disturbances.  Considering the erogenous significance of the anal zone which has been retained at least in transformation, one should not laugh at the hemorrhoidal influences to which the old medical literature attached so much weight in the explanation of neurotic states.

Children utilizing the erogenous sensitiveness of the anal zone can be recognized by their holding back of fecal masses until through accumulation there result violent muscular contractions; the passage of these masses through the anus is apt to produce a marked irritation of the mucus membrane.  Besides the pain this must produce also a sensation of pleasure.  One of the surest premonitions of later eccentricity or nervousness is when an infant obstinately refuses to empty his bowel when placed on the chamber by the nurse and reserves this function at its own pleasure.  It does not concern him that he will soil his bed; all he cares for is not to lose the subsidiary pleasure while defecating.  The educators have again the right inkling when they designate children who withhold these functions as bad.  The content of the bowel which is an exciting object to the sexually sensitive surface of mucous membrane behaves like the precursor of another organ which does not become active until after the phase of childhood.  In addition it has other important meanings to the nursling.  It is evidently treated as an additional part of the body, it represents the first “donation,” the disposal of which expresses the pliability while the retention of it can express the spite of the little being towards its environment.  From the idea of “donation” he later gains the meaning of the “babe” which according to one of the infantile sexual theories is acquired through eating and is born through the bowel.

The retention of fecal masses, which is at first intentional in order to utilize them, as it were, for masturbatic excitation of the anal zone, is at least one of the roots of constipation so frequent in neuropaths.  The whole significance of the anal zone is mirrored in the fact that there are but few neurotics who have not their special scatologic customs, ceremonies, etc., which they retain with cautious secrecy.