Notes on Oral Character Formation1

Whilst the groundwork of psycho-analytic characterology was firmly based on the results of empirical observations, uninfluenced by any theoretical considerations, it is only natural that recent advances should be closely associated with deeper understanding of stages in ego and libido development. It is now a matter of history how Freud's original description of anal erotism was followed after a few years by the publication of his observations on anal character traits and at a still later date by his separation of a definite anal-sadistic phase in the pregenital organisation of the libido.2 In the meanwhile Jones3 had been at work on the inter-relation of hate and anal erotism in the obsessional neuroses, and it is to him we are indebted for the first systematic and exhaustive description of the anal character. A similar sequence with more prolonged intervals is to be noted in the case of 'castration' traits, with which psycho-analytic readers had been familiarized some time before the final subdivision of the pregenital organisation to include a phallic stage was effected. The most recent expansion of characterology in the direction of the oral character, however, was not made until a previously sketched oral phase of libido development had been submitted to elaborate clinical investigation, although, as we shall shortly have occasion to note, the general tendencies of the oral character had been remarked upon by Jones in a paper written in 1911.

It was of course inevitable that a more detailed description of developmental stages would lead to a more systematic consideration of character formations, equally so that a tendency to fill up gaps in information by deduction would creep in. Recently, for example, the