at chess. Although Morphy was not, strictly speaking, a gambler, his case illustrates well the self destructive motives Freud believed to be the basis of the gambling compulsion (Fuller, 1974).
An alternative explanation of compulsive gambling, still well within the confines of orthodox Freudian theory, stresses the role of money in the gambler's psychic and practical life. Freud realized that the anal erotic impulses of childhood are reflected, in the adult, by the substitution of money for feces, a thesis elaborated by Ferenczi (1952). Fachinelli (1965) has extended Freud's and Ferenczi's formulation of the connection between feces and money.
Greenson (1947) has pointed directly to the anal quality of gambling as a key to understanding it within a psychodynamic framework. According to Greenson, the neurotic gambler is driven by anal erotic needs and impulses; the erotic character of gambling, he suggests, is apparent in the tension charged atmosphere that surrounds serious play, and in the sens
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