A Freudian Interpretation of Harvard Life

FREUD coined a now-popular term, "anal-retentiveness," that means more and more to me while I'm at Harvard. I'm not a psychologist, so I have no idea if I use the phrase correctly, but lately I notice a preponderance of such behavior.

Ignorant of the clinical definition of anal-retentive behavior, I use my own term--"anality." It also uses less syllables. Anality shows up often here at Harvard, and it's making me tense.

Such behavior has always bothered me, but I could never catagorize it before. Now with the term "anality" in hand, I hope I can identify it more easily, seek it out, and destroy it expeditiously. That would make me less tense.

I have to admit, I exhibit this tendency myself--I think everyone at Harvard does. We're all overacheivers, after all. My being tense means that I need calm people around to show me when I get out of hand. But in an environment defined by anality, I end up being the mellow one, trying to exert a stabilizing influence on the basket cases I feel constantly surrounded by.

Only the little things nag at me. The person on my floor freshman year that took six showers a day, for instance. I didn't see a need to berate him about his actions at the time, even though the constant steam was causing ceiling tiles to fall and toilet paper to become water-logged. I was able to understand that he somehow always needed to be wet.

Then I encountered another textbook case of anality, still in my very own bathroom. I was told that it was ludicrous to alternate the strokes with which I brought the razor across my face while shaving. For me, shaving does not require a chart with which to map out the attack on my five-o'clock shadow. How I shave depends on which hand I'm holding my beer with at the time. It depends on whether I've had too many beers. It depends on lots of things.

What this guy told me, however, was that for the proper shave, one must progress in distinct stages, always following the curvature of the face, moving from top to bottom, but also taking into strict account the particular needs of the jaw line and chin with several short, quick strokes, as deemed necessary, following the shave with four-to-five splashes of cool--approximately 75 degrees, never below 60--water, a half-ounce of one's preferred aftershave, and then a towel pat down to remove excess moisture from the skin.

I felt as though I had asked how to disarm a nuclear warhead. I laughed at him, thus losing the continuity of my shaving process, which could have had detrimental drying effects on my complexion, but it was worth it.

LIVING with carefully chosen roommates, I became somewhat insulated to the zealous anality that runs rampant in this community. Certainly my roommates have habits that annoy me, but living with them eases the frustration. Of course, it still drives me batty when they don't rinse my razor, and it's clogged with hair. Outside my room, however, I have less tolerance, less compassion.

I've begun to notice anality in my classes instead of the bathrooms now--the people who turn in papers a week before they're due, and who not only do optional problem sets, but review them before exams. These people are also starting to seriously grate on my otherwise genial personality, causing me to snarl at puppydogs and toddlers.

There's no escaping anality; Cambridge also seems full of these types. The bank I frequent has signals at each window that light up and ring gently when the tellers are ready for the next customer. Recently, I was at the window next to the one which is directly at the head of the line. The teller there politely asked the person in front if he could help him.

The man looked up sharply and asked if the teller was addressing him. When the teller replied yes, the man straightened himself, raised his finger and proceeded to lecture the teller on the proper usage of the signal lights, how the bank had spent a great deal of money to install them, how they were there to notify customers when windows opened, preventing confusion which in turn prevented chaos, and there was a system, and that...

Finally, the man asked the teller to please ring his little bell so that he would know to proceed to his window, at which point the teller told him that the bell was broken. But anality defies pragmatism, and so the man left in a snit, muttering something about system failures and anarchy.

The next time I come in contact with someone so obviously deranged, I may not be able to restrain my desire to strangle him. I doubt there is or will be a cure, but anality should definitely be treated as a disease, and Harvard should be able to provide a bumper crop of poster children for the first telethon.

The posters should be eight by 10, glossy, with just the proper amount of backlighting to highlight the poster child's features. The wrong angle could seriously damage the effect--imagine the result if the model were to wear white which notoriously shows up poorly on posters, and then there's the matter of what message to put on the poster. And that's not to mention the issue of which kind of lettering would be most appropriate? I mean, at the very least, the poster should be done just exactly right.