Toilet Symbols and Fantasies

It is the purpose of this communication to call attention to the fact that allusions to the toilet apparatus occur in certain, frequently encountered, stereotyped forms in dreams, waking fantasies, and in the unconscious fantasies which determine neurotic behavior. These stereotyped allusions may be called symbols for they are similar in their properties to the well-known symbols of anatomical structures, subjects and objects of instincts and technique of instinctual gratification as we recognize them in the derivatives of unconscious fantasies.1 Some of these symbols will be presented together with the instinctual techniques with which they are associated.

Case A. In the analysis of patient A, a young lady, a fantasy of being inside a toilet bowl recurred frequently, in many different versions, and with different affective implications. She reacted with disgust to the fantasy of being contaminated and soiled by other people whom she regarded as turds. She reacted with anxiety to the fantasy of her mother's attacking her by defecating on her. There were fantasies of being fed by the mother's feces, both as positive yearnings and in defensive form associated with the feeling of disgust or the fear of being smothered (by anal equivalent of the breast). She was uncomfortable in dirty places and equally uncomfortable in places that were shiny, clean, white and sanitary. Under the influence of negative, defensive affects, she would attempt or actually establish liaisons with the glamorous, dirty,