Psychosexual development:Freud’s model of psychosexual development

The first stage of psychosexual development is the oral stage, which lasts from the beginning of one’s life up to (about) the 15th month. During this stage, the focus of gratification 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 super ego are yet fully formed. Thus the baby does not have a sense of self and all actions are based on the pleasure principle.

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.

Psychosexual development

The concept of psychosexual development, as envisioned by Sigmund Freud at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, is a central element in his sexual drive theory, which posits that, from birth, humans have instinctual sexual appetites (libido) which unfold in a series of stages. Each stage is characterized by the erogenous zone that is the source of the libidinal drive during that stage. These stages are, in order: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Freud believed that if, during any stage, the child experienced anxiety in relation to that drive, that themes related to this stage would persist into adulthood as neurosis.