Customary belief, superstitions, and individual symptoms have identical functions: to assuage anxieties, gratify needs, and serve as means to discharge tensions. They are, however, used in different ways. Customary beliefs (and to a lesser degree superstitions) are socially and culturally integrative, part of the ethos, and in the mainstream of culture. Symptoms are endopsychic in origin and socially divisive, irritating to the environment. The irritating and socially divisive quality of a symptom is not accidental but purposive and indicative of the rebelliousness of the subject. The degree of this 'social negativism' of the subject may determine whether he chooses a customary belief, a superstition, or a symptom as the solution for a particular conflict. Some protective superstitions that appear superficially to be phallically exhibitionistic are anal in origin. The erect penis, for instance, exhibited as a treasured possession, is truly of anal origin, it exhibits a possession, not a feat.