Autor: Becker, Ernest

Buch: The Denial of Death

Titel: The Denial of Death

Stichwort: Freu: "anality", Analität; Dualismus: Körper - Selbst; analer Charakter: Verdrändung der conditio humana

Kurzinhalt: If the adult anxiously cuts it short ... This ... denial is what we mean by the "anal character."; the anus represents: decay and death

Textausschnitt: 30/b I am tempted to quote lavishly from the analytic riches of Brown's book, but there is no point in repeating what he has already written. Let us just observe that the basic key to the problem of anality is that it reflects the dualism of man's condition-his self and his body. Anality and its problems arise in childhood because it is then that the child already makes the alarming discovery that his body is strange and fallible and has a definite ascendancy over him by its demands and needs. Try as he may to take the greatest flights of fancy, he must always come back to it. Strangest and most degrading of all is the discovery that the body has, located in the lower rear and out of sight, a hole from which stinking smells emerge and even more, a stinking substance-most disagreeable to everyone else and eventually even to the child himself. (30f; Fs)

30b I am tempted to quote lavishly from the analytic riches of Brown's book, but there is no point in repeating what he has already written. Let us just observe that the basic key to the problem of anality is that it reflects the dualism of man's condition-his self and his body. Anality and its problems arise in childhood because it is then that the child already makes the alarming discovery that his body is strange and fallible and has a definite ascendancy over him by its demands and needs. Try as he may to take the greatest flights of fancy, he must always come back to it. Strangest and most degrading of all is the discovery that the body has, located in the lower rear and out of sight, a hole from which stinking smells emerge and even more, a stinking substance-most disagreeable to everyone else and eventually even to the child himself. (30f; Fs) (notabene)

31a At first the child is amused by his anus and feces, and gaily inserts his finger into the orifice, smelling it, smearing feces on the walls, playing games of touching objects with his anus, and the like. This is a universal form of play that does the serious work of all play: it reflects the discovery and exercise of natural bodily functions; it masters an area of strangeness; it establishes power and control over the deterministic laws of the natural world; and it does all this with symbols and fancy.*(Anm. d. Autors, jedoch nicht als Fußnote) With anal play the child is already becoming a philosopher of the human condition. ... [] The anus and its incomprehensible, repulsive product represents not only physical determinism and bouridness, but the fate as well of all that is physical: decay and death. ... [] * As anal play is an essential exercise in human mastery, it is better not interfered with. If the adult anxiously cuts it short, then he charges the animal function with an extra dose of anxiety. It becomes more threatening and has to be extra-denied and extra-avoided as an alien part of oneself. This extragrim denial is what we mean by the "anal character." An "anal" upbringing, then, would be an affirmation, via intense repression, of the horror of the degrading animal body as the human burden sans pareil.