In this paper I review some of the literature on soiling. Clinical material is then brought from three soiling children who each showed retentive features, and who were able to benefit from individual psychoanalytic psychotherapy. I suggest that in each case the symptom was indicative of a particular type of object relationship characterized by an excessive need to exercise omnipotent control over the object. The material demonstrates that this control served a defensive function, namely to protect the child from fully accepting the psychic reality of the Oedipal couple. A hypothesis is put forward as to the early antecedents of this situation.