What exactly is meant by “anal retentive”? I think I am that. I saw a T-shirt that said “You are anal retentive if you wonder if there should be a hyphen.” I wondered if there should be a hyphen in anal retentive. I have looked some of this stuff up at the library but got tired. I would appreciate your help. –Collyer, Honolulu, Hawaii
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Maybe you’d get less tired if you did less retaining. Anal retentiveness is an elaboration of Freud’s ideas on anality, first published in 1908. Freud wrote that people with “anal character” were meticulous, parsimonious, and obstinate. Though it’s not clear who first used the term “anal retentive,” in 1924 a student of Freud’s named Karl Abraham distinguished A-Rness from anal expulsiveness, which is pretty much what it sounds like, the predisposition to make a mess. Parsimony and obstinacy are thought to be core A-R traits, while meticulousness is thought to be a reaction against anal expulsiveness.
It may seem a little comical to you that Freud erected an impressive theoretical edifice on the fact that he couldn’t get into the bathroom in the morning. In fact there has been a bitter debate over the last couple decades about the extent to which Freudian theory and psychoanalysis generally are (or were) based on similar bits of half-baked speculation. Some argue that psychoanalysis lacks any scientific basis, and Cecil must say he does not see much effort on the part of the great psychoanalytic theorists to come up with testable hypotheses, the hallmark of the scientific method. No need to get into that now, but all parties to the debate apparently agree that “anal retentive” is slung about today strictly for its comic value, not because it has any intellectual heft.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
