ABSTRACT
Freud's enduring cultural influence is readily apparent in the ubiquity of his once-radical psychoanalytic terminology in everyday speech. One of the best such examples is the commonplace use of the term“anal” to describe obsessive–compulsive personality traits. Indeed, psychoanalytic theory offered the first systematic description and explanation of this personality style. Freud (1908/1963) contended that anal character is distinguished by the three core features of orderliness (with particular concern for bodily cleanliness and task conscientiousness), obstinacy (stubbornness and defiance), and parsimony (excessive frugality). The theory held that these traits were rooted in problematic toilet training, with associated conflicts over power, control, and anger , during the anal stage (McWilliams, 1994; Mitchell & Black, 1995). Fenichel (1945), making a symptomatic/characterologic distinction that persists today in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, differentiation of obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) and obsessive–compulsive personality disorder (OCPD), thought that anal character traits, although often accompanied by repetitive thoughts and ritualistic behaviors, represented not merely periodic regression but a true developmental arrest (Pollak, 1987; Simon & Meyer, 1990). The contrast noted by Gabbard (2000) and Pollak (1987) between the ego dystonic obsessions and compulsions of OCD and the ego syntonic nature of OCPD traits seems to lend support to such an etiologic distinction.
