anal-retentive

(ā′nəl-rĭ-tĕn′tĭv)

adj.

Indicating personality traits, such as extreme fastidiousness, stinginess, and obstinacy, supposed by psychoanalytic theory to originate during the anal stage in habits, attitudes, or values associated with infantile pleasure in retention of feces.

anal retentive

Psychiatry
adjective Referring to a person with an “anal personality”, who, according to classic Freudian psychoanalysis, has traits that arose in the anal phase of psychosexual development, in which defecation constituted the primary source of pleasure and retention of faeces is viewed as a manifestation of defiance to a parent figure.

Vox populi
adjective A popular term referring to an anal-retentive person, who is obstinate, rigid, meticulous, compulsive and overly conscientious.

anal-retentive

A psychoanalytic term indicating traits such as miserliness, obsessiveness, obstinacy and meticulousness. These characteristics are said to originate in values formed during the ‘anal stage’ of development when particular pleasure was taken in the retention of faeces. See also FREUDIAN THEORY.

Collins Dictionary of Medicine © Robert M. Youngson 2004, 2005

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