Anal Phase

According to Freudian psychoanalytic theory, adult personality development is associated with a series of psychosexual stages that children go through in the first years of life. The anal phase is the second phase of early childhood psychosexual development, when the child’s main source of pleasure is the process of retaining feces and its elimination (approximately the 2nd and 3rd years of life). Children develop bowel and bladder control in this stage, which usually leads to a sense of accomplishment and capability. Freud believed that acquiring these abilities was essential for adaptative development, as it was the basis for becoming a competent adult, as well as one with good self-control and high levels of cleanliness and orderliness. On the contrary, abnormal processing of the anal stage might cause the child to develop anal personality in adulthood, characterized by stubbornness and inflexibility.