Freud’s Psychosexual Stages Of Development You Can Remember The

freud’s psychosexual stages of development you can remember the order of these stages by using the mnemonic: “old (oral) age (anal) pensio

Freud’s Psychosexual Stages of Development
You can remember the order of these stages by using the mnemonic:
“old (oral) age (anal) pensioners (phallic) love (latent) grapes
(genital).
Oral Stage (0-1 year)
The first stage of personality development where libido is centered in
a baby's mouth. It gets much satisfaction from putting all sorts of
things in its mouth to satisfy libido, and thus its id demands, which
at this stage in life are oral, or mouth oriented, such as sucking,
biting, and breast-feeding.
Freud said oral stimulation could lead to an oral fixation in later
life. We see oral personalities all around us such as smokers,
nail-biters, finger-chewers, and thumb suckers. Oral personalities
engage in such oral behaviors particularly when under stress.
Anal Stage (1-3 years)
The libido now becomes focused on the anus and the child derives great
pleasure from defecating. The child is now fully aware that they are a
person in their own right and that their wishes can bring them into
conflict with the demands of the outside world (i.e. their ego has
developed).
Freud believed that this type of conflict tends to come to a head in
potty training, in which adults impose restrictions on when and where
the child can defecate. The nature of this first conflict with
authority can determine the child's future relationship with all forms
of authority.
Early or harsh potty training can lead to the child becoming an
anal-retentive personality who hates mess, is obsessively tidy,
punctual and respectful of authority. They can be stubborn and
tight-fisted with their cash and possessions. This is all related to
pleasure gotten from holding on to their feces when toddlers, and
their mother's then insisting that they get rid of it by placing them
on the potty until they perform!
The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a liberal
toilet-training regime during the anal stage. In adulthood the anal
expulsive is the person who wants to share things with you. They like
giving things away. In essence they are 'sharing their s***. An
anal-expulsive personality is also messy, disorganized and rebellious.
Phallic Stage (3 to 5 or 6 years)
Sensitivity now becomes concentrated in the genitals and masturbation
(in both sexes) becomes a new source of pleasure. The child becomes
aware of anatomical sex differences, which sets in motion the conflict
between erotic attraction, resentment, rivalry, jealousy and fear,
which Freud called the Oedipus complex (in boys) and the Electra
complex (in girls) This is resolved through the process of
identification which involves the child adopting the characteristics
of the same sex parent.
Oedipus complex
The most important aspect of the phallic stage is the Oedipus complex.
This is one of Freud's most controversial ideas and one that many
people reject outright.
The name of the Oedipus complex derives from Greek myth where Oedipus,
a young man, kills his father and marries his mother. Upon discovering
this he pokes his eyes out and becomes blind. This Oedipal is the
generic (i.e. general) term for both Oedipus and Electra complexes.
In the young boy, the Oedipus complex or, more correctly, conflict,
arises because the boy develops sexual (pleasurable) desires for his
mother. He wants to possess his mother exclusively and get rid of his
father to enable him to do so. Irrationally, the boy thinks that if
his father were to find out about all this, his father would take away
what he loves the most. In the phallic stage what the boy loves most
is his penis. Hence the boy develops castration anxiety.
This problem the little boy sets out to resolve by imitating, copying
and joining in masculine dad-type behaviors. This is called
identification, and is how the three-to-five year old boy resolves his
Oedipus complex. Identification means internally adopting the values,
attitudes and behaviors of another person. The consequence of this is
that the boy takes on the male gender role and adopts an ego ideal and
values that become the superego. Freud (1909) offered the Hans case
study as evidence for the Oedipus complex.
Electra complex
For girls, the Electra complex is less than satisfactory. Briefly, the
girl desires the father, but realizes that she does not have a penis.
This leads to the development of penis envy and the wish to be a boy.
The girl resolves this by repressing her desire for her father and
substituting the wish for a penis with the wish for a baby. The girl
blames her mother for her 'castrated state' and this creates great
tension. The girl then represses her feelings (to remove the tension)
and identifies with the mother to take on the female gender role.
Latency (5 or 6 to puberty)
No further psychosexual development takes place during this stage
(latent means hidden). The libido is dormant. Freud thought that most
sexual impulses are repressed during the latent stage and sexual
energy can be sublimated (re: defense mechanism) towards school work,
hobbies and friendships. Much of the child's energies arc channeled
into developing new skills and acquiring new knowledge and play
becomes largely confined to other children of the same gender.
Genital (puberty to adult)
Is the last stage of Freud's psychosexual theory of personality
development and begins in puberty. It is a time of adolescent sexual
experimentation, the successful resolution of which is settling down
in a loving one-to-one relationship with another in our 20's or so.
Sexual instinct is directed to heterosexual pleasure, rather than self
pleasure during the phallic stage.
For Freud, the proper outlet of the sexual instinct in adults was
through heterosexual intercourse. Fixation and conflict may prevent
this with the consequence that sexual perversions may develop. For
example, fixation at the oral stage may result in a person gaining
sexual pleasure primarily from kissing and oral sex, rather than
sexual intercourse.
Most psychiatrists today reject the large majority of Freud's work as
unsupported by evidence and best used for inspiration or historical
study, if at all. Although Freud developed his method for the
treatment of neuroses, some people today seek out psychoanalysis not
as a cure for an illness, but as part of a process of self-discovery.
Freud's notion that the child's relationship to the parent is
responsible for everything from psychiatric diseases to criminal
behavior has also been thoroughly discredited and the influence of
such theories is today regarded as a relic of a permissive age in
which "blame-the-parent" was the accepted dogma. For many decades
genetic and biological causes of psychiatric disorders were dismissed
without scientific investigation in favor of environmental (parental
and social) influences. Today even the most extreme Freudian
environmentalists would not deny the great influence of genetic and
biological factors.