There are, of course, pitfalls in any considerable undertaking. The exercises outlined avoid the major hazards. The child who receives intense, early stimulation to one erogenous zone, like the anus, can develop such an exclusive focus that other areas and sensations are dwarfed. Medical texts describe unusual objects inserted by adults into themselves for sexual enjoyment. Coke bottles and electric light bulbs are removed from the rectums of embarrassed patients with slippery fingers. (Haft, 1973) Most cases reveal a history of early anal manipulation.
Recently admitted to the pediatric
ward was a seven-year-old boy with intractable constipation
since infancy. His mother had treated him at home, first with
suppositories, then with daily voluminous hot water enemas,
until the age of six. I asked why she had ceased giving enemas
then. She replied, "It was the way he looked at me when
I fixed the enema bag. He was really enjoying it."
The child's personality can be affected by exaggerated
anal eroticism. As intense stimulation is imposed by the
powerful mother, the child begins to prefer being passive. In
the boy, this predisposes to a feminine attitude through the
wish to be penetrated.
As the mother is the only source of
stimulation, and indeed controls the enema bag, she remains
of central importance. (Kestenberg, 1976) This limits the
child's ability to move into other, healthier relationships,
accentuating his dependency and feelings of helplessness.
Other factors can predispose to passivity also. These include
chronic illness and prolonged indulgence with restriction of
outside interests. A reasonable balance between the active
and passive modes, and a diversity of erotic foci are essential
for a healthy sexual response.
Overemphasis on the genital focus can occur also,
although these cases appear only in families with massive
psychopathology. Rita is one such child. She was the firstborn
of Jessie, a schizophrenic woman who had herself been
beaten, abused, and abandoned in her early life. Jessie had
been raped by her grandfather at age four and sexually
molested by her mother's boyfriends. At age eighteen she
conceived while following a group of Hell's Angels. The latter
half of pregnancy was spent in a state mental hospital. She
was discharged to a relative when Rita was two months old.
This arrangement proved evanescent, and within four weeks
Jessie was living in a tiny room, supporting herself and Rita
through prostitution. From the time Rita was six months old,
she and Jessie had oral sex together several times each day.
Rita was removed from her mother's custody at age eighteen
months. At three she was seen for psychiatric evaluation
because of her insistent, well-calculated advances to any
adult female. Rita's foster mother was afraid to lie down on a
bed unless Rita was sound asleep.
An exclusive focus on one erogenous zone is easily
avoided. By nature children have catholic tastes. The older
infant and child only need the opportunity to develop their
own, independent preferences.
In the second half of the first year the infant has almost all
his eggs in one basket, and that basket is the mother, or whoever
else is the primary caretaker. The baby is acutely aware
of the mother's feelings, often reading her better than she
reads herself. When the mother is upset the child assumes
that he's to blame.
For instance, Peggy's mother resents having
her husband's brother living in the house because he
drinks a half gallon of milk for breakfast and never cleans
his room. After he leaves for class each morning she cleans
with a vengeance, muttering to herself. Peggy assumes that
her mother is angry with her. Her mother tends to avoid
Peggy when she feels like that, but a distinctive smell heralds
the need for a diaper change. "Yuk! What a MESS!" says
mother. Now Peggy knows why her mother's so upset.