Dear A,

Thank you for this funny, playful, very smart thought paper on Freud. It made me laugh out loud, something few literary critical pieces do.

I love what you did here, rhetorically and analytically. You demonstrate a firm grasp of Freud’s argument, and of his style, and you critique him nicely. The piece succeeds in providing some critical resistance to Freud’s often paternalistic voice.

This is strong work, but to strengthen it further, I am going to make a suggestion which will already be familiar to you from last term: do more close reading of the language of the text. Literary criticism is always strongest where it backs up its claims with close, sensitive reading and treatment of language, so please fortify your work for this course with as much of that as possible. In your first thought paper, your criticism of Freud is strongest where is dissects and analyzes his own use of language.

Overall, a strong first piece.

Grade: A-

All good things,
R.J.

—
AIB
September 23, 2011

Would you believe this shit?

Within the past four weeks, I have dealt with feces personally, professionally and academically. My daughter’s pediatrician prescribed Miralax for my five-year-old child’s severe constipation, only to have the pendulum swing to the furthest extreme. A vendor complained that a mattress I requested removed from one of my company’s group homes was so befouled with human waste that he refused to allow his men to handle it. Finally, the subject matter imposed itself upon me after opening Tara Dankel’s email notification that Freud’s essay “Character and Anal Eroticism” had posted to the class website. Sadly, I finished watching Elmo’s Potty Time with my daughter prior to reading the unfortunate missive. These experiences frame my perspective in this brief explanation on why Freud’s theory on the infant’s relationship with the “anal zone” stinks.

Freud uses apologetic language in broaching the subject of infantile incontienetia alvi [faecal incontinenence] and the characteristics of orderliness, parsimoniousness and obstinance in patients (294). By stating “I know that no one is prepared to believe in a state of things so long as it appears to be unintelligible and to offer no angle from which an explanation can be attempted,” Freud provides a sense that he and the reader are in this together. The subject may be unappealing to the reader but it must be discussed. Papa Freud will explain the matter to you to the best of his humble ability.

An infant retaining waste is rarely thought to be acting in defiance. Children become constipated for a variety of reasons including diet, intestinal blockage or the remembrance of a painful movement. In discussing the unpleasantness of willful infants refusal to relieve themselves as a matter of defiance, Freud attempts to ameliorate the shocking revelation of anal eroticism by “mak[ing] some suggestions which may help towards an understanding of it” (295-6). Here Freud gently reminds contemporaries of his authority on the matter. He allows that his theories on the human origins of anal eroticism are merely points to consider, however, he has observed, first hand, patients suffering from parsimonious and obstinate characteristics. The expert, therefore, wields authority in delving into pseudo-scientific matters that a layperson could hardly be expected to understand without guidance.

Toward the end of his essay, Freud examines habitual constipation in neurotics as a direct correlation to greed and invokes the use vocabulary to express the filth of money as a driving force in his character profiling. Freud states, “In reality, wherever archaic modes of thought have predominated or persist…money is brought into the most intimate relationship with dirt” (296). Money is necessary for survival in modern Western civilization and Freud capitalizes on the interest it generates by twisting the necessity into obsession. By explaining that his theories ‘lay down a formula for the way in which character in its final is formed,’ Freud asserts his authority as the researcher, doctor and ultimate authority on the matter.