ABSTRACT
Many psychoanalysts began to take oral sadism for a "fact", and treated it as a tried and tested element of psychoanalytic theory. Sigmund Freud's notion of anal erotism as leaning on physical needs is the difficult question of how to define the contents and aims of component-drive erotism, the relation between the body part that becomes an erogenous zone, its somatic-biological function, the aim of the drive, and the psychic meaning that is conferred upon the excitation of this zone. Freud's notes of the analysis with the "Rat Man" contain additional thoughts on anal erotism, such as "a most wonderful anal phantasy" and "'dirty' transferences". Anal erotism lent itself to express passive-feminine love wishes whereas sadism derived from active impulses and was put in the service of active wishes; at a later stage the "antithesis" between activity and passivity becomes "firmly attached to that between the sexes".
