anal stage


According to psychoanalysis, the second social and sexual stage of an infant's development (after the oral stage), in which the infant learns to control bowel movements. Freudian psychology maintains that children gain pleasure from both passing and withholding their feces. Psychoanalysts believe that development of an anal personality is associated with frustration over toilet training. (See also genital stage and pleasure principle.)

The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.