Conclusion
There is hardly a question in anyone's mind that anal sexual activities should be considered as a distinct form of sexual deviation. Since most sexual deviations can be viewed simply as exaggerations of the normal psychosexual developmental processes, the reader must view these deviations in the context of the overall personality.
Although the prognosis for improvement in a sexual deviation such as analism is usually thought of as being poor, it is enhanced whenever the person with anal erotic desires voluntarily seeks out psychiatric help, and where it is possible to understand the total social and emotional pattern in which the anal deviate lives, putting anal erotic symptoms in perspective as a part of the subject's total life experience.
Even though he or she has sought out professional help, the subject is usually obsessive and compulsive about his or her anal desires. Understanding and treatment, therefore, must include any form of psychiatric or psychological treatment which is capable of attacking the neurotic manifestations in their relationship to the total life experience of the individual.
Management of anal desires becomes a combination of psychiatric and legal approaches. The law often separates such individuals from society, but, unfortunately, equally often places sexual deviates of all sorts together. The stimulation of sexual deviations by other deviations becomes exaggerated by congregating individuals with similar problems.
The best opportunity the reader has to understand these individuals is to understand the neurotic process which led to the initial development of anal desires. Unfortunately, the older the subject is when his anal desires are exposed the less wish is there on his part for any treatment of his sexual deviation.
There is no clear agreement on the part of psychiatrists or psychologists as to how sexual deviations such as this should be handled in the clinical setting. To some extent this reflects not only the intrinsic pathology but also the impact of this psychopathology on society as a whole. Since psychiatrists and psychologists are themselves a part of the overall social community, they often reflect the moral values of the community regarding anal sexual activities, especially since sexual deviations such as analism are particularly susceptible to being viewed with moral implications. The attitude one must take, though, continues to be that of understanding the meaning of the anal desire to the individual, understanding the compulsion and its repetitious activity, and attempting to understand the satisfying aspect of the process and how it relieves the sexual tension which would otherwise be emotionally tearing the individual apart.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Ellis, Albert, and Arbarbanel, Albert, eds. The
Encyclopedia of Sexual Behavior. New York:
Hawthorne Books, 1961. Freedman, Alfred M., and Kaplan, Harold I., eds.
The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry.
Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins Co., 1967. Freud, Sigmund. Complete Works of Sigmund
Freud. New York: Macmillan Co., 1964. Kinsey, Albert, et al. Sexual Behavior in the
Human Female. Philadelphia: W. B. Saunders, Inc., 1953.
Masters, W. H., and Johnson, V. E. Human Sexual Response. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1966.
Rado, Sandor. "An Adaptational View of Sexual Behavior.'" In Psychoanalysis of Behavior, vol. I, p. 186. New York: Grune & Stratton, 1956.
Sherfey, M. J. "The Evolution and Nature of Female Sexuality in Relation to Psychoanalytic Theory." Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 14:28 (1966).
Thompson, Clara M. On Women. New York: New American Library, 1964.