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Sigmund Freud And The Psychosexual Stages Of Development

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Sigmund Freud was a very well-known psychologist in the early 20th century. He began his career in partnership with Joseph Breuer. Together they wrote and published the book Studies in Hysteria in 1895, after studying patients with hysteria and developing the idea that most mental disorders were caused by hidden traumatic experiences in the patients past. Freud began to put emphasis on the sexual experiences of childhood and he lost the support of Breuer. Freud continued his work alone and he published three more books. Freud’s work was not well recognized because of his emphasis on sex. In 1908, after the first International Psychoanalytical Congress, Freud’s work began to gain popularity and his psychoanalytic theory became well respected. He went on to publish more than twenty theoretical volumes and clinical studies. He continued to develop his ideas until he died of cancer in 1939. One of Freud’s theories was the psychosexual stages of development. It is important to recognize that Freud changed the meaning of sexuality to any form of pleasure that can be or is gathered from the body. Freud based his theory on the thought that all human instincts and drives were based on the desire to gain or increase bodily pleasure. Freud thought that if a person did not resolve their conflicts during each stage this would be the cause of any mental illness or phobia that they would have in their adult life. If one did resolve the conflict at each stage, then libido, sexual drives or

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