ABSTRACT
The psycho-cultural analysis made by Freudians uses essentially the same methods of analysis as 'psycho-history', and is essentially subject to the same criticisms. This chapter presents two examples of this tendency to interpret alleged facts based on hypothetical causes which in actual fact are irrelevant or non-existent. The first of these is 'The Case of the Japanese Sphincter'. The Freudian notion that adult personality is closely related to infant-training institutions was used during the war to establish a relationship between toilet-training and the allegedly compulsive personality of the Japanese, as shown both in their national character and in their cultural institutions. Geoffrey Gorer, a British psychoanalyst, invoked a toilet-training hypothesis to account for the 'contrast between the all-pervasive gentleness of Japanese life in Japan, which has charmed nearly every visitor, and the overwhelming brutality and sadism of the Japanese at war'. Gorer's theory is put in terms which imply a direct causal nexus: swaddling produces the Russian character.
