Freud is out of style -- which makes him all the more pertinent.
Most of us have heard the term "anal retentive." It means a person who is stingy, obsessed with details, order, precision, cleanliness. He is punctual and respectful of authority.
Freud found the cause in overly strict toilet training. The infant gets pleasure in holding his feces inside.
That is not Trump.
He is the exact opposite of anal retentive. Trump is anal expulsive.
Which calls for an explanation.
A new-born infant is boiling with libido energy that is totally unfocused. Freud´s theory of 5 stages of psychological development deal with how that energy becomes directed.
Freud thought the human personality is formed very early. The undirected libido develops through various fixations. If a stage is not psychologically completed and released, a person can become trapped in it. That may result in the creation of defense mechanisms to avoid the anxiety produced from the conflict in and leaving the stage in question.
Freud´s stages:
Age Name Pleasure source
0-2 Oral Mouth: sucking, biting, swallowing
2-4 Anal Anus: defecating or retaining feces
4-5 Phallic Genitals Oedipus (boys), Electra (girls)
6-puberty Latency
Puberty onward Genital
Conflict during each phase:
Weaning away from mother´s breast.
Toilet training
Sexual urges sublimated into sports and hobbies
Physical sexual changes reawaken repressed needs
Direct sexual feelings towards others led to sexual gratification
The anal phase is characterized by withholding/expelling feces. An anal-expulsive person, Freud thought, is the product of liberal toilet training. Unlike the anal-retentive, the anal-expulsive personality derives pleasure from releasing feces.
The key: if you have problems during any of the psychosexual stages which are not effectively resolved, you will become fixated on that earlier stage and when under stress you will regress to the characteristics of that stage.
You just saw how to manipulate Trump:
Stress.
Pressure; unrelenting pressure.
Stress causes him to become more and more anally expulsive -- disorganized, cruel, rebellious, messy, careless, self-confident, full of emotional outbursts. He goes down the only path he knows -- regression to a 2-4 year-old.
Childhood regression creates static in rational decision-making. That is why and how Trump ends up making bad choices for himself and for America.
Stumbling, fumbling. Self- sabotage.
Trump trumps Trump.
We are constantly told we have no power. But no man lacks the power to destroy himself. That may be the ultimate lesson learned from the Trump experience.
* * *
Duress is how to manipulate Trump. Watch the nightly news; surf the Internet. I don´t think I am telling anything new to Russian, North Korean or Chinese intelligence agencies.
In fact, I have detected a tandem. Think of a tag team with three members. One after another after another they tease and taunt Trump who, left to his own devices, fights them alone.
More and more alone.
Duress... I´m not saying anything new to Bob Mueller either.
The long and the short of it:
If you elect an anally-expulsive person to public office, you´re going to have a mess on your hands.