Conclusion
Psychoanalytic investigations of sexual deviations such as analism were initiated by Freud's discovery, in the course of his study of infantile sexuality, that the sexual aims of the deviant were identical with those of a child.
More specifically, in sexual deviations, adult sexuality is supplanted by infantile sexuality. In fact, however, this represents an oversimplified formulation of the current psychoanalytic concept of sexual deviation and requires further elaboration.
At the onset it should be pointed out that sexual deviations such as analism have been practiced throughout history, among all races, and at certain times and in certain places and cultures analism has been generally accepted or was even esteemed.
Thus, Freud described sexual deviations as "universally human." Deviant tendencies, and even occasional deviant acts, or at least adult fantasies regarding such deviant acts, occur in the life of each and every individual, normal and neurotic alike.
Dr. O. Fenichel's comments in The Psychoanalitic Theory of Neurosis are particularly appropriate:
Since the aims of perverse sexuality are identical with those of infantile sexuality, the possibility for every human being to become perverse under certain circumstances is rooted in the fact that he was once a child.
In other words, perverse or deviant acts such as analism are exaggerated distortions of acts which also occur as part of the sexual behavior of normal individuals. The crucial difference lies in the fact that the deviant act does not represent the sole source of sexual excitation and gratification for the sexually normal individual. Consequently, it will take a less definite form when it appears in the normal individual.
To illustrate, "polymorphous" sexual activity which is characteristic of sexual foreplay prior to intercourse represents a regression to infantile sexuality. However, in our culture at least, such foreplay is appropriately regarded as completely normal sexual behavior. It becomes psychopathological only when the initial aspects of intercourse, e.g. foreplay, are more satisfactory to the individual than genital union with a willing partner of the opposite sex of a similar degree of sexual maturity.
While foreplay, as the primary source of sexual pleasure for some people, is a useful example of a form of sexual deviation in this context, it may also be somewhat misleading to the layman. Actually, pathological states which represent nothing more than a direct regression to infantile sexuality are not to be considered as being typical deviations.
like the normal adult, the typical deviant can achieve genital union and orgasm once the obstacles which block sexual gratification are removed by the performance of the desired deviant sexual act. The point is that deviant sexuality is not simply disorganized activity, in a manner reminiscent of the polymorphous perverse sexuality of children and of infantile or retarded personalities. Rather, it is organized under the guidance of one component instinct of infantile sexuality, such as a regression to the anal-erotic stage. The satisfaction of this anal-erotic instinct makes genital orgasm possible for the deviant in a normal manner.
like the neurotic, the sexual deviant has specific pathogenic repressions. He has unconscious oedipal conflicts, and a strong unconscious castration anxiety. Similarly, disturbances in genital primacy in neurosis and sexual deviations alike may be attributed to the same factors, anxiety and guilt feelings which are associated with the Oedipus complex.
But anxiety over loss of love or sexual excitement is less important in sexual deviations such as analism. Rather, classical psychoanalytic theory postulates that it is always castration anxiety, and derivative guilt feelings, which prevent the deviant from achieving sexual pleasure in normal sexual intercourse. The anal sexual deviation serves, then, as a denial of the possibility of castration. When this denial of the possibility of castration is successful, sexual pleasure and orgasm become possible for the anal deviate.