I started using the phrase “anal retention” in its various forms recently. Why?
- It’s funny
- I like seeing my friends’ reactions to it
Most of my friends are not very fond of — might I say, anal retentive — about my usage of the phrase because they think of butt stuff. Rightfully so. Perhaps I’m also writing this post to illicit a reaction from my friends. So if you’re a friend and reading this, tell me what you think about my topic of the day.
One of my friends was convinced that anal retention couldn't actually have anything to do with butts. I believed it had everything to do with butts, and keeping things stuck inside of them. So I googled it.
The origins of “anal retention”
It turns out that the phrase, indeed, comes from butts and things stuck inside people’s butts. And it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the phrase comes from Sigmund Freud.
Stages of early-childhood development
The concept of anal retention was noted in Freud’s stages of early-childhood development. The stages of early-childhood development, according to Freudian psychology, are as follows:
- Oral: Birth through 1 year
- Anal: 1 – 3 years
- Phallic: 3 – 6 years
Bad tl;dr of Freudian psych: Freud believed that personality developed through the physical development of various erogenous zones; therefore, personality disorders stemmed from failures of physical development.
Of course, anal retention is part of the anal phase of development, so we’re going to focus on that for today. Mostly because I think Freudian psych is a bunch of hogwash and I don’t want to talk about it more than this post requires.
Freud and butts
The anal stage is marked by the development of bladder and bowel control. In essence, successful potty training is associated with healthy personality development due to the sense of accomplishment and independence that comes with it.
Bad potty training
Freud believed that potty training a child too early, or harshly punishing a child for failing to use the toilet correctly, would lead to the child deliberately refusing to defecate in an act of rebellion. In other words, the child is literally retaining poop in their butt.
This failure of potty training, according to Freud, would cause the child to become obsessively clean and punctual in adulthood. Furthermore, their adult personality might be stubborn, or particularly acquiescent to authority. You might even say this type of personality is anal retentive.
Grammar time
I love talking about grammar about as much as I hate thinking about Freudian psychology, so this is just a fun little section for me.
According to most dictionaries, anal retention and its variants may or may not use a hyphen. If you haven’t already heard, many compound words have lost their hyphens over the years, so I’m going to go with the times and not use the hyphen.