ABSTRACT
In his paper on the anal character, Freud moved on from interpreting symptoms to make a determined attempt to understand character and its development. Typically, he took his well-tried model: a character trait like a dream symbol or a symptom has a hidden, unconscious meaning which can be discovered by the psychoanalytic method, and is to be understood in terms of libidinal restriction. Some part of the anal erotism enters into the final organization of mature sexual life, part of it undergoes sublimation, and the rest finds an outlet in character-formation. He discerned two kinds of oral trait connected to two sub-phases of orality—the pre-ambivalent and the oral-sadistic subphases—and thus arise two forms of the oral character. These were the optimistic, acquisitive character and the ambivalently hostile or envious character. When Freud described his structural model, in 1923, the emphasis on the characteristic libidinal impulses was superseded by the analysis of the ego.
