The Psychosexual Stages Of Development

Freud’s theory of personality examined the interplay between the primitive, instinctual urges—the ‘id’; the practical and rational ‘ego’; and the morally attuned ‘superego’; ‘object relations’ refer to the "object" of an instinct”, which is “the agent through which the instinctual aim is achieved”—most often a person and, according to Freud, most often the mother (Ainsworth 1969, p. 1). The psychosexual development theory that Freud launched reduces our behaviour to mechanistic responses to an instinctive need for pleasure fueled by the ‘libido’ and barriers or distortions to the gratification of the libido at various delineated stages of development were responsible for later problems in life (Kail & Zolner 2012, p. 5). Erik Erikson later added depth to the approach by including more humanistic elements to Freud’s stages and including more periods of development (p.

Psychoanalytic theories describe development as primarily unconscious and heavily colored by emotion. Psychoanalytic theorists emphasize that behavior is merely a surface characteristic and that true understanding of development requires analyzing the symbolic meanings of behavior and the deep inner workings of the mind. They also stress that the experiences children have with their parents earlier on in life shape development. The psychoanalytic theory highlighted by Sigmund Freud who was born in 1856 and died in 1939. As he listened to and examine his parents he was influenced they were the result of experiences early in life. He thought that as children grow up, their focus of pleasure and sexual impulses shifts from the mouth to the anus and eventually to the genitals. As a result, we go through five stages of psychosexual development: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. The oral stage is when the infant’s pleasure centers on the mouth, the anal stage is when

Apart from the features mentioned above, the core assumption of the psychoanalytic perspective is that a person’s personality depends on childhood experiences. In this psychosexual development theory, Freud assumed that all children go through five stages. These are the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency stage and genital stage. He believed that a fixation would occur if a child experienced extreme problems or pleasure. (Eysenck, 1994)

Sigmund Freud's "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality", written in 1905, attempted to trace the course of the development of the sexual instinct in human beings from infancy to maturity. This instinct is not simply an animal instinct but is specific to both human culture and the form of conscious and unconscious life we live within it. For Freud sexuality is infinitely complicated and far-reaching in its effects and forms the basis of self-identity and interactions. His Third Essay discusses the transformations of puberty in both males and females. Part four of this essay focuses on the differentiation between male and female sexuality. Freud states in this part that 'as far as the autoerotic and masturbatory manifestations of sexuality

Although irrational, many of these drives originated during childhood. According to this theory a child’s first six years of life is divided into three stages. These three stages, characterized by a type of sexual pleasure, are as follows, oral stage, anal stage, and phallic stage. Oral stage is present during infancy. It holds the idea that the mouth is the erotic body part. The anal stage, present throughout toddlerhood, holds the idea that the anus is the erotic body part. The last stage, phallic stage, is present during the preschool years. This stage holds the idea that the child’s libido declares his or her genitalia as their erogenous zone. After these three stages there is latency, and then genital stage (Berger, 2008).

When a toddler is expelling the bowels, for example, while wearing diapers, this would be characterized as “anal expulsion”, but when the toddler starting the potting training process this is called the “anal retention”. Third, the phallic phase, whereas young boys encounter an Oedipus phase, much like the Oedipus complex, they fear the father and castration and has sexual fantasies about the mother. For a young girl she would enter the Electra phase, where she could acquire penis envy, which often can cause one to turn away from sexual life all together. After the phallic phase there is a pause of latency in the sexual development, though finally in the Genital phase sexual functions are organized and coordination of sexual urges involving pleasure is completed. “These investigations led him to conclude that childhood fears and experiences, often sexual in nature, accounted for neuroses-hysteria, anxiety, depression, often obsessions and so on” (Freud). Freud also claims that if there is an error that occurred in the sexual development it can result in homosexuality or sexual perversions in a person. Freud continues to explain that the child would get the appropriate gender-related behaviors enforced though indentifying with a same-sex parent, which would need to take place naturally.

Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their sexual urges onto opposite sex peers, with the primary focus of pleasure are the genitals. Interest in the welfare of others grows during this stage as opposed to the earlier stages where the focus was solely on individual needs. It is also the time when the individual tries to come to terms with unresolved residues of the early childhood. Although the focus is again on the genitals, within this stage the energy is expressed with adult sexuality. While in the phallic stage gratification is linked with satisfaction of the primary drives, the ego in the genital stage is well-developed, and so uses secondary process thinking, which allows symbolic gratification. The symbolic gratification may include the formation of love relationships and families, or acceptance of responsibilities associated with adulthood.

This research paper will compare and contrast two of the most influencial psychologists who helped shape the way we understand the development of the human mind; Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson. The paper will focus on the similarities and differences between Freud’s Psycho-sexual theory, and Erikson’s psychosocial theory. Freud was one of the very first influencial psychologists who changed the way we study humans. Erikson recognized Freud’s contributions, and although he felt Freud misjudged some important dimensions of human development, he was still influenced by Freud, which caused some similarities in their theories.

Freud theorized that Infantile Sexuality occurred when a child’s sexual instincts are present in childhood but later are repressed. A “normal” childhood would be one in which

According to Freud, development is sexual motivated and a child goes through five psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Freud believed

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was an influential Austrian psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud went on to produce several theories, such as his theory on psychosexual development, which will be the focus of this assignment. Using the case study of a six-year-old patient, I will discuss the key principles of Freud’s theory on psychosexual development. Including, comprehensive definitions of the concepts used, and the stages of Freud’s psychosexual development. Lastly using Freud’s theory, I will explain how the patient’s current behaviour, could impact her behaviour in adulthood.

The nature and nurture of the human sexuality has been a debate argued among researchers and scientists. With regards to human sexuality, both nature and nurture become an integral factor in making the sexual beings that we eventually get to be. From our hereditary inclinations to how our associates influence our advancement, our childhoods have a tendency to be one long trek into adulthood that is neither pre-customised or totally formed by outside components, this trek incorporates the blooming of our sexual nature. his debate is concerned with the extent to which particular aspects of behaviour reflects the influence of genetically arranged maturity or whether it comes from learning and experience.This essay will disclose to what degree human sexuality is the consequence of nature or nurture; it will likewise relate sexuality to the Biopsychosocial.

Relying on an analogy with seedlings, Freud suggests that adults would not have the particularities of their sexual lives without a root cause, and that origin must have been childhood. For Freud, the child is necessarily a sexual being (403). It is unclear if he acknowledges other elements in the lives of children, as he classifies many typical childhood activities as sexual, e.g. suckling the breast or thumb, playing, and generally expressing themselves and their organs. It is safe to say that the sexual is at least, in his theory, a significant portion of childhood (404). The original source of pleasure, in Freud’s experience (with mostly bourgeois Viennese patients), is the mother’s breast, thus the first stage of childhood development is the oral stage. The later switch to thumb sucking is only another expression of this same urge to stimulate the erotogenic (pleasure creating) zone of the mouth. Children move onto the anal stage when they enter conflict with their parents (or other adult figure) over control of their excretion. Freud explains that children derive pleasure from excretion, and thus it is important to them and a focus of children’s (sexual) lives (407). Soon they mature to the final erotogenic zone, and the genitals should thereafter serve as the exclusive source of pleasure. The gist seems to be that each stage offers more pleasure than the previous, despite increasing

From a Freudian perspective human development is based on psychosexual theory. From a psychosexual perspective maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development (Shaffer et al., 2010). Ultimately, Freud believed that sex was the most important instinct and any mental disturbance revolved around sexual conflicts that were suppressed from childhood. Furthermore, Freud believed that parents permitting too much or too little gratification of sexual needs led

More specifically, Freud traces the roots of all adult behaviors back to childhood impulses and showed how conflicts related to the development of sexuality in childhood subsequently results in psychopathology or neuroses. (Good & Beitman)