Psychosexual development

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concept of psychosexual development began with Sigmund Freud when he developed his theories of psychoanalysis in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In the development of his theories, Freud's main concern was with sexual desire, defined in terms of formative drives, instincts and appetites that naturally determined one's behaviours and beliefs, even as those behaviours and beliefs are continually repressed.

Freud also believed that the libido developed in individuals by changing its object, through the process of sublimation. He argued that humans are born polymorphously perverse (see polymorphous perverse), meaning that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. Following a biological logic, Freud established a rigid model for that "normal" sexual development of the human being, or the "libido development". Each child passes through five psychosexual stages. During each stage, the id focuses on a distinct erogenous zone on the body. According to Freud, suffering from trauma during any of the first three stages may result in fixation, which could give rise to a sexual fetish (or paraphilia). Freud related the resolutions of the stages with adult personalities and personality disorders.

Despite their popularity among psychoanalytical psychologists, Freud's psychosexual theories are commonly criticized as being sexist. For example, Freud stated that young females develop "penis envy" toward the males during their psychosexual development. In response, Karen Horney, a German Freudian psychoanalytist, argued that young females develop "power envy" instead of "penis envy" toward the male. Many people feel uncomfortable about Freud's views and some feel that they are wrong, likewise many psychotherapists find the material valuable.

Terminology associated with Freud's stages of psychosexual development is culturally fashionable in American society. For example, commonly people refer to others with obsessive compulsive disorder as anal.

1 Freud's model of psychosexual development
2 See also

[edit] Freud's model of psychosexual development

[edit] The stages

Stage	Age Range	Erogenous zone(s)	Consequences of Fixation
Oral	0-18 months	Mouth	Oral fixation: Passive dependence or excessive smoking/eating
Anal	18-36 months	Bowel and bladder elimination	Anal-retentiveness: Obsession with organization or excessive neatness Anal-expulsive: Reckless, careless, defiant, disorganized
Phallic	3-6 years	Genitals	Oedipus complex (in boys only according to Freud) Electra complex (in girls according to Jung not Freud)
Latency	6 years-puberty	Dormant sexual feelings	(People do not tend to fixate at this stage, but if they do, they tend to be extremely sexually unfulfilled.)
Genital	Puberty and beyond	Sexual interests mature	Frigidity, impotence, unsatisfactory relationships

[edit] Oral phase

The oral stage in psychology is the term used by Sigmund Freud to describe the child's development during the first eighteen months of life, in which an infant's pleasure centers are in the mouth. This is the first of Freud's psychosexual stages.

This is the infant's first relationship with its mother; it is a nutritive one. The length of this stage depends on the society. In some societies it is common for a child to be nursed by its mother for several years, whereas in others the stage is much shorter. Suckling and eating, however, compose the earliest memories for infants in every society. This stage, especially in some tribal societies, holds special importance because they consider the stomach to be the seat of emotions. These societies are commonly found in the Southwest Pacific and Africa.

[edit] Anal phase

From 18 months to 36 months the child is in the anal stage. In this stage they are learning to control the expulsion of feces making the libidinal energy focused in their bowel movements. Two types of characters can develop from this. The expulsive character would have been prone to malicious excretion either just before they were placed on the toilet or just after they were removed from the toilet. In this case the expulsive characters can develop if the parents are too lax with discipline. In adulthood it can result in messy or disorganised people who are reckless, careless, and defiant. The retentive character takes pleasure in holding in the feces in spite of the parents training. These people develop into neat, organised, careful, meticulous, obstinate people often mean with money who are passive-aggressive.

This stage has significant effects on the future views of authority.

[edit] Phallic phase

At 36 months to about 72 months the libidinal energy shifts from the anal region to the genital region. This is where the Oedipus or Electra complex is developed. The young boy falls in love with his mother and wishes that his father was not in the way of his love (the Oedipus Complex). At this point he notices that women have no penis and fears that the punishment of his father for being in love with his wife, may be castration. This fear is enhanced if he is shouted at for masturbation at this stage. Once the fear of retaliation has subsided the boy will learn to earn his mother's love vicariously by becoming as much like his father as possible. This is where the superego stems from. He will adopt his father's beliefs and ideals as his own and move on to the latency stage.

Girls may similarly fall in love with the father and wish the mother was not there (the Electra complex), though this is debatable.

A fixation on this stage will produce reckless, resolute, self-assured, vain, proud people and Freud believed that this could be the root of homosexuality. They can show both signs of promiscuity or asexuality, amorality or puritanism. They flip between the behaviours according to the doctrine of opposites. If the conflict is never resolved the adult can be afraid or even incapable of developing close loving relationships with other people.

[edit] Genital phase

The genital stage starts at puberty, allowing the child to develop opposite sex relationships with the libidinal energy again focused on the genital area. According to Freud, if any of the stages are fixated on, there is not enough libidinal energy for this stage to develop untroubled. To have a fully functional adulthood, the previous stages need to be fully resolved and there needs to be a balance between love and work.

It is important to note that anyone can become arrested at or insufficiently grow out of any of the primal stages, leading to various symptoms in one's adult life.

Freud's theories were decidedly masculine, which is why he has received a great deal of criticism from feminists. Freud had difficulty incorporating the female's desires into his theories, and even stated late in his life, "psychology too is unable to solve the riddle of femininity". Freud argued that young girls followed more or less the same psychosexual development as boys. Whereas the boy would develop a castration conflict, the girl would go on to develop penis envy, "the envy the female feels toward the male because the male possesses a penis." (Shultz 66) After this stage, the woman has an extra stage in her development when the clitoris should wholly or in part hand over its sensitivity and its importance to the vagina. The young girl must also at some point give up her first object-choice, the mother, in order to take the father as her new proper object-choice. Her eventual move into heterosexual femininity, which culminates in giving birth, grows out of her earlier infantile desires, with her own child taking place of the penis in accordance with an ancient symbolic equivalence. Freud wrote: "girls feel deeply their lack of a sexual organ that is equal in value to the male one; they regard themselves on that account as inferior and this envy for the penis is the origin of a whole number of characteristic feminine reactions" (Freud 1925 quoted in Shultz 67).