ABSTRACT
According to the usual view the formation of character is to be traced back partly to inherited disposition, and partly to the effects of environment, among which particular significance is ascribed to upbringing. Psycho-analytical investigation has for the first time drawn attention to sources of character-formation which have not hitherto been sufficiently considered. On the basis of psycho-analytical experience we have come to take the view that those elements of infantile sexuality which are excluded from participation in the sexual life of the adult individual undergo in part a transformation into certain character-traits. As is well known, Freud was the first to show that certain elements of infantile anal erotism undergo a transformation of this kind. Some part of this anal erotism enters into the final organization of mature sexual life, some becomes sublimated, and some goes to form character. These contributions to character from anal sources are to be regarded as normal. They render it possible for the individual to adapt himself to the demands of his environment as regards cleanliness, love of order, and so on. Apart from this, however, we have learnt to recognize an ‘anal character’ in the clinical sense, which is distinguished by an extreme accentuation of certain character-traits; but it is to be noted that the excessive addiction to cleanliness, parsimony, and similar tendencies found in such characters 394never succeeds completely. We invariably find the opposite extreme more or less strongly developed in them.
