Conversation best not had with a new mother

"Faeces, penis and baby, are all three solid bodies; they all three, by forcible entry or expulsion, stimulate a membraneous passage, i.e. the rectum and the vagina, the latter being as it were 'taken on lease' from the rectum." (Sigmund Freud, On Transformation of Instincts as Exemplified by Anal Eroticism)

In this essay, Freud suggests that a baby, a gift, a penis, money and faeces are all "ill-distinguished from one another" and "easily interchangeable". Common sense really.

The epistemophilic impulse

"The early connection between the epistemophilic impulse [cf. epistemology] and sadism is very important for the whole mental development. This instinct, roused by the striving of the Oedipus tendencies, at first mainly concerns itself with the mother's womb, which is assumed to be the scene of all sexual processes and developments. The child is till dominated by the anal-sadistic libido-position which impels him to wish to appropriate the contents of the womb. He thus begins to be curious about what it contains, what it is like, etc. So the epistemophilic instinct and the desire to take possession come quite early to be most intimately connected with one another and at the same time with the sense of guilt aroused by the incipient Oedipus conflict."

Melanie Klein (1928) 'Early Stages of the Oedipus Complex'. In J. Mitchell (ed) The Selected Melanie Klein. Harmondsworth:Penguin, 1986; p.72