Psychosexual development:Freud’s model of psychosexual development

The first stage of psychosexual development is the , which lasts from the beginning of one’s life up to (about) the 15th month. During this stage, the focus of is on the mouth and pleasure is the result of nursing, but also of exploration of the surroundings (as infants tend to put new objects in their mouths). In this stage the id is dominant, since neither the ego nor the are yet fully formed. Thus the baby does not have a sense of self and all actions are based on the .

The ego, however, is under formation during this first stage. There are two factors that contribute to the formation of the ego. Firstly, body image is developed, which implies that the infant recognizes that the body is distinct from the outer world. For instance, one will start understanding that one feels pain only when force is applied on one’s own body. By the identification of the body boundaries, one starts developing the sense of ego. A second factor to which ego formation is attributed is experiences involving delay of and leads to the understanding that specific can satisfy some needs. The infant gradually realises that is not immediate and that it has to produce certain to initiate actions that lead to . An example of such behaviour is crying, which seems to be purposeless during the first 2 months of the baby’s life, but later seems to be used productively and is connected to certain needs. (Leach 1997)[4]

The key experience in this stage is weaning, during which the child loses much of the intimate contact with the mother and leads to the first feeling of loss ever experienced by the baby. Weaning also adds to the baby’s awareness of self, since it learns that not everything is under its control, but also that is not always immediate.

In this stage, the of needs will lead to the formation of an independent, since the baby forms a clear idea about the limits of the self and has formed its ego) and trusting, since the baby learned that specific will lead to and thus to trust its own abilities but also its parent’s (and generally social environment) willingness to meet its requirements, personality. On the other hand, a can lead to passivity, guibility, immaturity and unrealistic optimism, but also to the formation of a generally manipulative personality, due to improper formation of the ego. This can be the result of either too much or too little . In the case of too much , the child does not learn that not everything is under its control and that is not always immediate (which are the results of weaning), forming an immature personality. On the other hand, the child’s needs may be insufficiently met, and thus the child becomes passive since it has learned that either it produces behaviour or not, no will come.

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. Sucking and eating, however, compose the earliest memories for infants in every society. This stage holds special importance because some tribal societies commonly found in the Southwest Pacific and Africa, consider the stomach to be the seat of emotions.

Anal phase

In the anal stage of the psychosexual development the focus of drive energy () moves from the upper digestive tract to the lower end and the anus. This stage lasts from about the 15th month to the third year of age. In this stage, the formation of ego continues.

The major experience during this stage is toilet training. This occurs by the age of two (there may be fluctuations among different societies as to the age in which toilet training occurs), and results to conflict between the id, which asks for immediate of its drives that involves elimination and activities related to it (such as handling faeces) and the demands of their parents. The resolution of this conflict can be gradual and non-traumatic, or intense and stormy, depending on the methods the parents will use to handle the situation. The ideal resolution will come if the child tries to adjust, but also the parents are moderate, so that the child will learn the importance of cleanliness and order gradually, which will lead to a self-controlled adult. If the parents emphasise on toilet training too much while the child decides to accommodate, this may lead to the development of compulsive personality, extensively concerned about order and neatness. On the other hand, if the child decides to heed the demands of the id and the parents give in, the child may develop a messy and self-indulgent personality. If the parents react, the child will have to comply, but it will develop a weakened sense of self, since the parents were the ones who controlled the situation, not the ego.

Phallic phase

The phallic stage extends from about three to five years of age, and the associated with it as the area of the genitals. Even though the is focused on the genitals, this is not in the form of adult , since the children are yet physically immature. However, stimulation of genitals is welcomed as pleasurable and boys, like adult males, may have erection during their sleep. Children become increasingly aware of their body and are curious about the body of other children, but also their parents’, so that very often children of this age can be observed taking off their clothes and playing “the doctor” with each other, but also asking their mother whether she has a penis. These observations persuaded that the is focused on the genitals this period of time.

The major conflict of this stage is called Oedipal conflict, the name deriving from Oedipus, who killed his father and unintentionally slept with his mother. used the term Oedipal for both sexes, but other analysts proposed that we refer to the female variant as Electra complex. In the beginning, for both sexes the primary care giver (at least at most societies) and main source of is the mother. As the child develops, however, it starts forming a sexual identity and the dynamics for boys and girls alter. For both sexes, the parents become the focus of drive energy.

For the boy, the mother becomes more desired, while the father is the focus of jealousy and rivalry, since he is the one who sleeps with the mother, but still he is one of the main caregivers. The id wants to unite with the mother and kill the father (like Oedipus did), but the ego, based on the reality principle, knows that the father is stronger. The child also feels affectionate towards the father, one of the caregivers, and his feelings are ambivalent. The fear that the father will object to the boy’s feelings is expressed by the id as fear that the father will castrate him. The castration fear is not rational, and occurs in a subconscious (irrational) level.

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.” The envy is rooted in the fact that without a penis, the female cannot sexually possess the mother as driven to by the Id. As a result of this realization, she is driven to desire sexual union with the father. 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.[citation needed] 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. Generally, considered the Oedipal conflict experienced by girls more intense than that experienced by boys, potentially resulting in a more submissive and less confident personality.

In both cases the conflict between the id drives and the ego is resolved through two basic defence mechanisms of the ego. One of them is repression, which involves the blocking of memories, impulses and ideas from the conscious mind, but does not lead to resolution of the conflict. The second is identification, which involves incorporation of characteristics of the same-sex parent into the child’s own ego. The boy by adopting this mechanism seeks for the reduction of castration fears, since his similarity with the father is thought to protect the boy from him. The identification of girls with the mother is easier, since the girl realises that neither she, nor her mother have a penis. ’s theory regarding the psychosexual dynamic present in female children in this point of their psychosexual development is termed, though not by himself, the Electra complex. ’s theory of feminine , particularly penis envy, has been sharply criticized in both gender and feminist theory.

If the conflict is not resolved, a in this stage may lead to adult women striving for superiority over men, if she had overwhelming feelings of devastation due to lack of penis, being seductive and flirtatious, or very submissive and with low self-esteem. On the other hand, men can exhibit excessive ambition and vanity. Overall, the Oedipal conflict is very important for the development, since by identifying with one of the parents, morality becomes internalised, and compliance with rules is not any more the result of punishment fear. A poor identification with the opposite sex parent may lead to recklessness or even immorality.

Latency phase

The latency period is typified by a solidifying of the habits that the child developed in the earlier stages. Whether the Oedipal conflict is successfully resolved or not, the drives of the id are not accessible to the ego during this stage of development, since they have been repressed during the phallic stage. Hence the drives are seen as dormant and hidden (latent), and the the child receives is not as immediate as it was during the three previous stages. Now pleasure is mostly related to secondary process thinking. Drive energy is redirected to new activities, mainly related to schooling, hobbies and friends. Problems however might occur during this stage, and this is attributed to inadequate repression of the Oedipal conflict, or to the inability of the ego to redirect the drive energy to activities accepted by the social environment.

Genital phase

The fifth and last stage of psychosexual development, the genital stage, lasts from puberty, about the twelfth year of age, and onwards. It actually continues until development stops, which is ideally in the eighteenth year of age, when adulthood starts. This stage represents the major portion of life, and the basic task for the individual is the detachment from the parents. It is also the time when the individual tries to come in terms with unresolved residues of the early childhood. In this stage the focus is again on the genitals, like in the phallic stage, but this time the energy is expressed with adult . Another crucial difference between these two stages is that, while in the phallic is linked with satisfaction of the primary drives, while the ego in the genital stage is well-developed, and so uses secondary process thinking, which allows symbolic . The symbolic may include the formation of love relationships and families, or acceptance of responsibilities associated with adulthood.

Related posts

May 31, 2008 | Filed Under Constructs 

Comments

Leave a Reply