Psychosexual development: Background

Freud observed that, at somewhat predictable points during early development, children’s behavior often orients around certain body parts (the mouth during breast-feeding, the anus during potty-training, and later the genitals). Believing, due to his previous work with hysterical patients, that adult neurosis often has root in childhood sexuality, Freud proposed that these behaviors were childhood expressions of sexual fantasy and desire. He suggested that humans are born “polymorphous perverse”, meaning that infants can derive sexual pleasure from any part of the body.[2], and that it is only though socialization that libidinal drives are focused into adult heterosexuality.

Due to the fairly predictable time-line that the childhood behaviors in question follow, Freud developed a rigid model for what he considered to be the “normal” sexual development of the child, which he called “libido development”. According to this theory, each child passes through five psychosexual stages. During each stage, the libido has a different erogenous zone as the source of its drives.

However, in the pursuit of satisfying these sexual urges, the child may experience failure or reprimand from their parents or society for their behaviors, and may thus come to associate anxiety with this erogenous zone. In order to avoid this anxiety, the child becomes preoccupied with themes related to this zone, a phenomenon Freud termed fixation. Freud believed the fixation persists into adulthood and underlies the personality structure and psychopathology, including neurosis, hysteria and personality disorders. Freud called this psychosexual infantilism.

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