Terence Hines - Pseudoscience and the Paranormal

The theory becomes doubly nonfalsifiable, if such a thing is possible, when one considers the effects of gentle toilet training—the effects of gentle toilet training are indistinguishable from those of strict training. On the one hand, if the training is such that the mother

pleads with the child to have a bowel movement and praises him extravagantly when he does, the child will come to regard the product he has made as being of great value. Later in life he may be motivated to produce or create things to please others or to please himself as he once made feces to please his mother. Generosity, giving presents, charity, and philanthropy may all be outgrowths of this basic experience. (Hall 1954, p. 108)

Does this mean that gentle toilet training will always result in this sort of behavior? Not at all:

If too much emphasis is placed on the value of feces, the child may feel that he has lost something valuable when he defecates. He will respond to the loss by feeling depressed, depleted, and anxious. He will try to prevent future loss by refusing to give up his feces. If this mode fixates and generalizes, the person will be thrifty, parsimonious, and economical. (p. 108)

So gentle toilet training can result in either a generous person or a tightwad. Again, both styles of personality can be “explained” after the fact, but neither can be predicted.

Further, note that strict toilet training can be used to explain the “strict budgeting of time and money,” while gentle toilet training can result in someone who is “thrifty, parsimonious, and economical.” Also, gentle training can result in “generosity, giving presents, charity, and philanthropy,” while strict training can produce “extravagant” behavior. Thus, the same behavior can be “explained” by opposite types of toilet training and opposite types of behavior can be “explained” as being due to identical toilet training procedures.

Freud’s fecal fascination does not end here. Hall (1954) states that “the gentle pressure on the intestinal walls of the rectum is sensually satisfying” and “if a person gets fixated upon this form of erotic pleasure it may develop into a generalized interest in collecting, possessing, and retaining objects” (p. 108). But if a reaction formation develops, the “person will feel impelled to give away his possessions and money in a heedless manner or lose them by making foolish investments or by reckless gambling. Having things makes such people so anxious that they will do almost anything to get rid of them.” A reaction formation is a Freudian mechanism that permits a post hoc “explanation” of behavior that is the opposite of that “predicted” by some part of the theory. It is only possible to tell that a reaction formation has taken place after observing that the behavior in question did not occur as predicted.

In spite of the fearsome logical problems with Freud’s formulation of the relationship between toilet-training procedures and personality, it is possible to ask whether there is any consistent relationship between these variables. The answer is no. Research in which the actual toilet-training procedures used by parents have been investigated has shown that there is no relationship between this variable and personality (Klein 1968; Eysenck and Wilson 1973).

Klein’s (1968) study is of special interest here as it shows the type of research findings that are touted as “supporting” Freudian theory. Klein argued that investigations that examined the actual toilet-training procedures used were unreliable. He used a different, indirect method to assess the relationship between toilet training and personality. He gave subjects the “Blackie pictures.” This is a set of eleven drawings showing a little black dog in various interactions with other dogs. These interactions are supposed to represent, symbolically, various stages and conflicts in human psychosexual development. One of the pictures shows Blackie defecating between two dog houses, one occupied by his mother, the other by his father. If a subject’s response to this picture indicates that it upsets or disturbs him more than the other pictures in the set, this is taken as evidence that psychosexual development has fixated at the anal stage. Further, if the story the subject makes up about the picture contains themes related to revenge or aggression against the parents, this is taken as a sign of “anal expulsiveness.” If the stories the subjects make up contain themes relating to cleanliness and concealing things from the parents, these are said to indicate “anal retentiveness.”

Klein (1968) correlated subjects’ Blackie responses with responses on several paper-and-pencil tests of obsessive-compulsive personality traits. He found several statistically significant positive correlations, from which it was concluded that “anal eroticism” is related to later obsessive-compulsive traits. The anal eroticism is presumably related to toilet training, so it is argued that the results support the existence of a relationship between toilet-training procedures and personality. This conclusion is invalid for several reasons. First, toilet-training procedures to which the subjects were exposed as children were never measured. It is simply assumed, in the absence of any supporting data, that anal eroticism is caused by toilet-training procedures. Second, the Blackie test is an example of a projective test. Such tests have very low reliability and validity, as will be discussed later in this chapter. Finally, as Eysenck and Wilson (1973) have cogently noted, there is a much simpler explanation for the positive correlations Klein found. The paper-and-pencil tests used appear to be reasonably good measures of obsessive-compulsive tendencies. People who are tidy are more compulsive than those who are not and are likely to be more disgusted and upset by defecation than are messy folk. In fact, one of the questions on one of the paper-and-pencil tests that Klein used was “Do you regard the keeping of household dogs as unhygienic?” Other questions concerned cleanliness and related topics. In view of this, the correlations Klein found aren’t surprising. They simply demonstrate that tidy people are more put off by canine fecal matter than are less tidy and clean people. This is not exactly a finding that will set psychology on its ear, and it is certainly no warrant to infer support for vague Freudian hypotheses that have not been verified in earlier studies where the crucial variable—toilet—training procedure—was much more directly measured.

Another well-known aspect of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development is the Oedipus complex and the castration anxiety that is said to result from this complex. Hall (1954) describes the Oedipus complex as the state in which “the boy craves exclusive sexual possession of the mother” (p. 109). Considering that the complex is alleged to occur at about the age of five, the claim seems, at best, a bit far-fetched. At that age, hormonal processes related to normal adult sexual behavior are essentially nonexistent. In spite of this, Freud claimed that every five-year-old male wants to have an erection and have sexual intercourse with his mother. This lust is unconscious, of course. As if the basic Oedipus complex were not bizarre enough, Freud adds another touch. The boy’s father naturally resents the son’s lusting after his wife. The boy realizes this and fears that his father will do something to retaliate for the boy’s sexual interest in his mother. What will the father do? Why, cut off the boy’s penis, of course. This fear is the castration anxiety talked about at great length by Freudian psychologists. Apparently, castration anxiety develops spontaneously, but “the reality of castration is brought home to the boy when he sees the sexual anatomy of the girl, which is lacking the protruding genitals of the male. The girl appears castrated to the boy. ‘If that could happen to her, it could also happen to me,’ is what he thinks” (p. 109).