ABSTRACT
Expressions such as “oral-dependent” and “anal-sadistic” still survive in the verbal shorthand experienced clinicians use. To those with similar training, such comments briefly describe patients and sum up prominent dynamics, though taken with a grain of salt. It has been many years since I encountered a clinical setting in which such terms were used in formal diagnosis. Identifying a client’s personality in terms of fixations in early development leaves too much unsaid about subsequent adaptation and current adult functioning. The later character types in Freudian psychology pay much more attention to predominant defensive operations and styles of coping.
