shit-phase
Explanation
This comic contrasts "Actual Sigmund Freud" with "Popular Science Treatments of Freud." In the top panel, the actual Freud is shown delivering a characteristically explicit and disturbing psychoanalytic assessment: a boy has passed his "shit-obsession phase," is now in his "penis-obsession phase," is intimidated by his father's anatomy, secretly wants to impregnate his mother, and this is the source of his anxiety. This is a fairly accurate (if blunt) summary of Freud's theories of psychosexual development, including the anal stage, the phallic stage, and the Oedipus complex.
In the bottom panel, a modern pop-science presenter cheerfully summarizes Freud's contribution as: "And it was Freud who discovered children have feelings!" — a comically sanitized reduction of Freud's deeply provocative and sexually explicit theories.
The joke is about how popular science writing tends to sand down the genuinely shocking and controversial aspects of historical thinkers' work into bland, palatable summaries. Freud's actual theories were obsessed with sexuality, incest, and bodily functions in ways that modern audiences find uncomfortable, so popularizers reduce his legacy to something innocuous. The contrast between the two panels highlights this comedic gap between reality and the sanitized version.