ETIOLOGY AND COVARIATION OF OBSTINACY, ORDERLINESS, AND PARSIMONY IN YOUNG CHILDREN

Abstract

In a paper first published in 19o8, Freud (9) hypothesized a relation between eroticism and a cluster of personality traits--obstinacy, orderliness, and parsimony. His observations led him to propose that these traits develop as unchanged perpetuations of anal erotic activities, as sublimations of such activities, and as reaction formations against them. Subsequently, Brill (6), Jones (11), Freud (io), Abraham (i), Menninger (12), and other psychoanalytic writers have elaborated and further specified the behavioral manifestations of these basic traits. Orderliness is said to be expressed in bodily cleanliness, propriety, tidiness, punctuality, a preference for symmetry rather than asymmetry, and reliability and conscientiousness in the performance of minor duties. Obstinacy is manifested in stubbornness, passive aggression, and ritualistic persistence. Parsimony is shown through miserliness and irrational attitudes toward money, acquisitiveness, avarice, cupidity, and hoarding. Even in his earliest account, Freud indicated his belief that the three character traits are not of equal importance in the whole complex. According to him, parsimony and obstinacy are more basic to and closely related