Elms suggests Bettelheim may have missed the anal aspect of the tale that would make it helpful to the child's personality development. In "Handbook of Psychobiography" Elms describes Southey's tale not as one of Bettelheimian post-Oedipal ego development but as one of Freudian pre-Oedipal anality. He believes the story appeals chiefly to preschoolers who are engaged in "cleanliness training, maintaining environmental and behavioral order, and distress about disruption of order". His own experience and his observation of others lead him to believe children align themselves with the tidy, organised ursine protagonists rather than the unruly, delinquent human antagonist. In Elms's view, the anality of "The Story of the Three Bears" can be traced directly to Robert Southey's fastidious, dirt-obsessed aunt who raised him and passed her obsession to him in a milder form.