anal sadism

in the classical psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, the expression of aggressive impulses in the anal stage of psychosexual development, involving both the destruction of the object and its possession and control. It is manifested in the adult in the form of an anal-aggressive personality.

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Psychology term of the day

November 22nd 2024

population variance

(symbol: σ²) the square of the population standard deviation. It is a measure reflecting the spread (dispersion) of scores in a complete population of interest (e.g., the test scores of all students at a school).