up in me, I begged fiercely, and she did. She hurt me, but I liked it. Suddenly, and for the first time in my life, I felt an orgasm building. I felt water squirt in. I moaned and, as I reached my climax, she pushed the dildoe way up deep. Then, as I gradually slipped down from the peak, she lay there on top of me with it still in me.
“'Ohhh,' I moaned, 'that was so wonderful.'
“'That's good,' she said brightly withdrawing from me and wiping me back there with a Kleenex.
“'I'll probably be back,' I said, sitting up and getting ready to dress.
“'Oh, be delighted to have you. I like doing a pretty girl. It's a bit of a treat.'
“Moments later I was back at the underground station catching the next train for Piccadilly. I'd have dinner at one of the sea food restaurants, I decided, and then go to the Haymarket and see a play. My bottom felt sore, but, for the first time that I could remember, I felt gratified. The tension was gone, and, much to my own surprise, I didn't feel degraded or ashamed. And why should I be? I thought. After all, all I'd done was go for a treatment. It didn't hurt me or anybody else; it was good for me. I decided I'd probably go again before I went back home where I could never have my kind of therapy; and all next winter, when I was in that stupid office typing business letters, I'd remember how nice it had been.”
Anal eroticism is one of the common forms of sexual deviation and is being given increasingly more attention in recent studies. Freud recognized it, and described the anal phase as the second of three stages of sexuality in the child. It succeeds the oral, which is manifested by sucking, and precedes the genital, in which there is direction away from the ego to others. Freud, however, did not believe that anal intercourse was very common, even among practicing homosexuals, and held that it was very rare among women. Other early pioneers in the study of the psychology of sex, such as Krafft-Ebing and Havelock Ellis, also reported very few such cases. The rarity of case histories of anal intercourse in the classical literature is probably less because of the uncommon occurrence of analism than because of the powerful taboos against confessing to it. Kinsey's Sexual Behavior of the Human Female (1953) confirms that the anus is definitely an erogenous zone and Frank Caprio cites several case histories, although, in his Sexual Deviations (1950) lists pederasty as a minor perversion. It is simply not known how much analism exists, but judging from very recent paperback literature, dating from the commencement of the new permissiveness around 1966, it could be fairly widespread.
It would seem from the rather meager evidence at hand that the anal erotic, both male and female, is a highly secretive person, driven like the young lady in the aforementioned case history, by powerful compulsions. These urges are often inconsistent with the individual's sensitivity and idealism. Yet, what the anal erotic really wants is to regress, to return to the paradise of childhood from which he has been expelled and for which he yearns. His sexuality is closely related to the games he played, “doctor,” “house” and such, and to the sex experiments which they so frequently led to. The higher and more sublimated aspects of sex are actually repellent to the deviate. He prefers sex to be divorced from courtship and love, and to be confined to those physical activities and forms of play which he enjoys. He or she wants to be the child again and to derive gratification from assaults.' Anal intercourse and the various forms of anal masturbation are essentially substitutes for the enemas given to the child around the time of puberty or just before. All forms of analism usually stem from these experiences.
The anal stage, according to Freud, is one in which the young child's resistance to toilet training leads to focusing on the anal functions and their pleasures and pains. Because the retention of feces is pleasurable, and also enemas, some children briefly focus on their anal functions. Most go through this stage to the genital, and develop an interest in the penis or vulva, but a few do not make the transition and remain fixated at the infantile level. This Freud maintained, is the basic cause of analism as a deviation.
As Freud pointed out, the essential feature of deviation is the preference of something to heterosexual genital intercourse. Consequently, anal intercourse is sometimes experimented with by young boys and girls who engage in this practice only as a substitute. Insertion of various objects into the anus is masturbation, and anal intercourse is in somewhat the same category. Later, the majority of older children abandon their anal experiments for genital sexuality. The few that do not, and who persist in the other forms of sexual behavior, preferring them to so-called normal intercourse, are whom the Freudians define as deviates.
Post-Freudian psychiatry no longer takes a stern view toward deviation, and, in general, does not aim at adjustment as the goal; as Fromm points out, it is society itself that is sick, and trying to make people conform to a sick society is anything but good therapy. Consequently, contemporary psychiatrists usually encourage deviates to accept their own particular forms of sexuality rather than feel obliged to sublimate.
Among the various forms of sexual behavior anal eroticism remains little understood. It was frequently associated with homosexuality and thought to be confined chiefly to men. Heterosexual anal intercourse was known to occur, of course, and, indeed, the laws against buggery, the legal term for this act, remain in most societies. But it was thought that girls and women submitted to anal intercourse only to accommodate men, and that the men who performed anal ism were at least latent homosexuals.
This view is probably wrong. Some men and women, it is impossible to know what percentage, derive sexual satisfaction from anal penetration. This is anal eroticism. Many if not most of the men who do so are attracted only to women, not to members of their own sex. And, at least some women actually enjoy anal penetration. Both, it can probably be said, find buttocks beautiful, and the gluteal regions are, for them, the primary erogenous zone. There is consequently some relationship between anal eroticism and flagellation. Some anal erotics are sadomasochists, preferring, however, penetration to whipping. The pain of anal penetration is bitter-sweet and intense, but it also has been found that some people are actually very sensitive in the rectal region and derive intense pleasure from having something inserted.
Some teenagers prefer anal eroticism in order to avoid the dangers of conception. In these cases, however, analism is usually a substitute, a contraceptive device. The only genuine anal erotics are those who primarily derive sexual gratification from anal penetration, either actively or passively.
The Freudians were probably right in holding that anal eroticism begins in early childhood, in some cases before the age of five. Post-Freudian studies have confirmed the influence of enemas, but it is probably less the physical sensation of being given an enema than the ritual surrounding it that stimulates the child's sexuality. The experience is probably most intense where there is some strictness concerning sexuality, and where the antithesis between puritanical insistence on modesty and the “indecency” of being given an enema is particularly sharp. The child cannot regard it as simple medication. It contradicts everything that he has been taught.
Since girls are brought up much more conservatively than boys, enemas are apt to make a more serious impression on them. For many, an enema is the earliest sexual experience. As Chidekel suggests in his Female Sex Perversions, the girl will probably resist the enemas at first, regard them as highly indecent assaults, but later she may develop a craving for them, concoct illnesses so that the injections may be repeated, and, after puberty, start giving them to herself as a form of masturbation. Such girls may also turn to other forms of anal gratification, such as anal intercourse. There may also be lesbian situations, group sex in which girls give enemas to each other; very rarely, situations may occur in which anally erotic mothers give enemas to their daughters and, by so doing, stimulate anal interests in them. All such activities are exceptionally secretive and, for this reason, study of them is very difficult.
There can be no doubt that anal sex is most common among children of both sexes during the pre-puberty period and, up through the ages of twelve and thirteen, when adolescents are particularly experimental. By sixteen the majority of youngsters have turned to normal genital sex interests in the context of boy-girl relations, social activities, and the purely sexual element has become somewhat sublimated into the forming of pair bonds or even group sex in which the social aspect is more important than the physical. The minority who remain fixated in the earlier desire for purely physical sex and sex play now become deviants where previously their activities, the same activities, were normal. Experiments, including anal experiments, seem to occur most commonly between the ages of ten and fourteen. Prior to that time the interest is more latent than actual, and later it diminishes except among those who are highly regressive.
As mentioned before, there is one principal reason why anal eroticism occurs, and this is the enema. Young children are often given enemas by their mothers, or in the hospital by nurses. They also indulge in sex games like “doctor,” and usually enjoy such situations. Although these activites are “naughty” there is seldom much guilt, and the naughtiness, of course, adds considerably to the pleasure.
No childhood form of sexual behavior is deviate or perverse. Experiment is natural to children, and almost anything the child does is, in that sense, innocent. This, in itself, gives prepuberty sex a certain quality which the adolescent loses and which many adults recall with regret. In certain respects childhood is the happiest time of life,
