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Some years ago Heimann drew attention to the comparative neglect of the anal stage in recent developments of psychoanalytic theory. In “Notes on the Anal Stage” (Heimann, 1962) she expressed the view that over-exclusive preoccupation with the oral stage has led to a distorted picture of childhood developmental processes, by portraying mechanisms as operating from birth which actually became established through gradual maturation. She saw a need to reappraise traditional concepts about the anal stage as a step towards remedying this imbalance.
Her principal contention was that in psychic processes of the anal stage lay the prototypes of all subsequent creative activities. Since the body functions are not directed towards other persons, “the fantasies involved in the anal sensations must be thought of as intrinsically devoid of object notions, fully narcissistic and incommunicable”. She criticised the tendency only to see in childhood anal behaviour fantasied sadistic attacks on the parents or their images. She also questioned the belief that the child was always prone in omnipotent fashion to overvalue his fashion products. That such thoughts and feelings might become associated with the child's excretory functions was not denied; but she disputed whether they were the primary motives for the child's acts of withholding or soiling. Instead of these conventional and rather condemnatory appraisals, Heimann suggested that strivings for anal mastery reveal the first signs of the child's emerging ego-autonomy allied to a benign narcissism necessary for healthy creativity. Hence the importance of this stage, not only for the child, but also for our understanding of many ego functions.
Mention of terms like “ego-autonomy”, “creativity” and “benign forms of narcissism” might lead one to suppose that Heimann's fresh ideas about the anal stage had fallen on fertile soil. Several major additions to psycho-analytic literature in recent years (e.g. Winnicott, 1971; Milner, 1969; Ko