"Rat Man" was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose 'case history' was published as Bemerkungen über einen Fall von Zwangsneurose ['Notes Upon A Case Of Obsessional Neurosis'] (1909). The nickname derives from the fact that one of the patient's symptoms was an obsessive fantasy concerning two people close to him, in which a pot of rats was fastened to their buttocks to gnaw into the anus.