Are You Anal?

First, let me just say that the word anal gives me the willies.

I don’t like saying it at all, and I am a little worried that writing an entire blog post about this is going to warrant some unfriendly search traffic–but I just can’t stop myself.

I feel like when people talk about anal, they are actually talking about being anal retentive. But, In one of my psychology classes in college, we learned what it was to be anal expulsive.

Yeah, that’s right–I just said anal expulsive. I’ll give you a minute to really let that sink in.

Now, it isn’t at all what you think it means.

It all goes back to good ‘ol Freud.

You see, the thing about Freud is that a lot of the stuff he said was dead on. We’re talking so freaking right that there was just no way he wasn’t a genius, but then other times-he was talking so much crazy that it pretty much makes anything he says laughable.

So, one of the big parts of psych classes is listening to your professors pick apart Freud’s theories and telling you which ones they think are total crap and which ones are absolute truths.

So, what’s anal expulsive?

Well, Freud believed that a child who doesn’t take control of their sphincter at the anal stage will become fixated and end up with a anal-expulsive personality – which includes being disorganized, messy, careless, rebellious, and on rare occasions, cruel.

So basically, with the exception of the cruel part–Freud thinks all those free thinkers and artists out there can blame their carlessness on the fact that they couldn’t get it together back when they were potty training.

So, let’s just think about this for a second–does this mean that if I’d been more in control of my–um–butt at the age of 3, then maybe I would have been an accountant instead of a writer?

Man, I’m glad I had all that Mexican food…