Anal eroticism

Anal eroticism is erotic activity focusing on the anus, and sometimes the rectum. Sigmund Freud hypothesized that the anal stage of childhood psychosexual development was marked by the predominance of anal eroticism.[1]

Sexological

Since the mid-twentieth century, English speaking sex manuals like The Joy of Sex have acknowledged the erogenous sensitivity of the anus, and its role in love play.[2] Its author, Alex Comfort, recognised that anal intercourse was part of many heterosexual as well as homosexual relationships[3] (as indeed had Freud at the start of the century).[4] Comfort also stressed the importance (in the French tradition) of postillionage or anal fingering prior to orgasm.[5]

Some decades after Comfort, Margot Anand explored how liberating anal eroticism might contribute to peak experience in sexual activity.[6]

Developmental

D. W. Winnicott would speak accordingly of "the tremendous pleasure that belongs to the doing of a motion just exactly when the impulse comes...another little orgy that enriches the life of the infant".[7]

Freud in his 1908 article Character and Anal Erotism argued that, through reaction formations and sublimation, anal eroticism could turn in later life into character traits such as obstinacy, orderliness and meanness.[8] Sándor Ferenczi extended his findings to cover the sublimation of anal eroticism into aesthetic experiences such as painting and sculpture, as well as into an interest in money.[9] Otto Fenichel linked anal eroticism to feelings of disgust, to masochism, and to pornography.[10]

Julia Kristeva would subsequently explore anal eroticism in connection with her concept of abjection.[11]

See also

References

  1. ↑ P. Gay, Freud (1989) p. 281-2
  2. ↑ Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (1974) p. 118
  3. ↑ Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (1974) p. 118
  4. ↑ Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) p. 64-5
  5. ↑ Alex Comfort, The Joy of Sex (1974) p. 167
  6. ↑ Margot Anand, The Art of Sexual Ecstasy (1990) p. 1-2 and p. 336-345
  7. ↑ D. W. Winnicott, The Child, the Family, and the Outside World (1973) p. 43-4
  8. ↑ Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (PFL 7) p. 208-15
  9. ↑ Sandor Ferenczi, 'The Ontogenesis of the Interest in Money' in J. Halliday/P. Fuller eds., The Psychology of Gambling (1974) p. 264-272
  10. ↑ Otto Fenichel, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis (1946) p. 139, 351 and 359-60
  11. ↑ F. L. Restuccia, Melancholics in Love (2000) p. 66

Further reading

  • Susan Isaacs, 'Penis-Feces-Child', International Journal of Psychoanalyisis VIII (1927)
  • Jack Morin, Anal Pleasure and Health: A Guide for Men, Women and Couples, 4th edition, San Francisco, Down There Press, 2010, ISBN 0940208377
  • "Eroticism, anal (International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis)". Archived from the original on 2013-10-19.
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