Page:Psychology of the Unconscious (1916).djvu/269

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expressed thereby. The question is only whether this corresponds to the psychology of the child. Before we enter upon this question, it must be stated that the anal region is very closely connected with veneration. One thinks of the traditional fæces of the Great Mogul. An Oriental tale has the same to say of Christian knights, who anointed themselves with the excrement of the pope and cardinals in order to make themselves formidable. A patient who is characterized by a special veneration for her father had a phantasy that she saw her father sitting upon the toilet in a dignified manner, and people going past greeted him effusively.[17] The association of the anal relations by no means excludes high valuation or esteem, as is shown by these examples, and as is easily seen from the intimate connection of fæces and gold.[18] Here the most worthless comes into the closest relation with the most valuable. This also happens in religious valuations. I discovered (at that time to my great astonishment) that a young patient, very religiously trained, represented in a dream the Crucified on the bottom of a blue-flowered chamber pot, namely, in the form of excrements. The contrast is so enormous that one must assume that the valuations of childhood must indeed be very different from ours. This is actually the truth. Children bring to the act of defecation and the products of this an esteem and interest[19] which later on is possible only to the hypochondriac. We do not comprehend this interest until we learn that the child very early connects with it a theory of propagation.[20] The libido afflux probably accounts for the enormous interest in this act. The