ABSTRACT
The history of toileting the mind in psychoanalysis begins with S. Freud's colleague J. Breuer. The toileting of the mind appears in many different forms at different stages in analysis, but in general the consequence is persecutory in its primitive form and depressive in its more mature form. Anxieties about using the toilet provided in the waiting-room are evidence of the link between defecation and the infantile fear of retaliation from the "toilet" analyst. The greatest areas of shame and horror about perverse structures in the mind and the greatest pessimism come from the conviction that the "toileting" function of the internal parental coitus will be overwhelmed and the mind/breast will be flooded with debris. But the infant may learn from the experience of repeated cycles of psychosomatic toileting followed by the offer of the mind/breast that although frustrated by separation, enough can be understood "not to smash the pot".
