Developing personality: Psychosexual Stages

Freud proposed that personality development in childhood takes place during five psychosexual
stages, which are the oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages. During each stage sexual
energy (libido) is expressed in different ways and through different parts of the body.
These are called psychosexual stages because each stage represents the fixation of libido
(roughly translated as sexual drives or instincts) on a different area of the body. As a person
grows physically certain areas of their body become important as sources of potential
frustration (erogenous zones), pleasure or both.

Freud (1905) believed that life was built round tension and pleasure. Freud also believed
that all tension was due to the build-up of libido (sexual energy) and that all pleasure
came from its discharge.

Defense Mechanisms
Sigmund Freud (1894, 1896) noted a number of ego defenses which he refers to
throughout his written works. His daughter Anna Freud (1936) developed these ideas
and elaborated on them, adding ten of her own. Many psychoanalysts have also added
further types of ego defenses.
1. Repression – is an unconscious mechanism employed by the ego to keep
disturbing or threatening thoughts from becoming conscious.
2. Denial – denial involves blocking external events from awareness. If some
situation is too much to handle, the person just refuse to experience it.
3. Projection – this involves involves individuals attributing own unacceptable
thoughts, feeling and motives to another person.
4. Displacement – satisfying an impulse (e.g. aggression) with a substitute object.
 5. Regression – this is a movement back in psychological time when one is faced
with stress
6. Sublimation – satisfying an impulse (e.g. aggression) with substitute object. In
a socially acceptable way.
Defense mechanisms are psychological strategies that are unconsciously used to protect
a person from anxiety arising from unacceptable thoughts or feelings. According to
Freudian theory, defense mechanismss involve a distortion of relaity in wome way so
that we are better able to cope with a situation.