PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT OF SIGMUND FREUD

INTRODUCTION Sigmund Freud (May 6, 1856 - September 23, 1939) was an Austrian psychiatrist and the founder of the psychoanalytic school of psychology, a movement that popularized the theory that unconscious motives control much behavior. He became interested in hypnotism and how it could be used to help the mentally ill. He later abandoned hypnotism in favor of free association and dream analysis in developing what is now known as "the talking cure." These became the core elements of psychoanalysis. Freud was especially interested in what was then called hysteria, and is now called conversion syndrome. The name Freud is generally pronounced Froid in English and Froit in German. Freud's theories, and his treatment of patients, were controversial in 19th century Vienna, and remain hotly debated today. Freud's ideas are often discussed and analyzed as works of literature, philosophy, and general culture in addition to continuing debate around them as scientific and medical treatises. He is commonly referred to as "the father of psychoanalysis." A child at a given stage of development has certain needs and demands, such as the need of the infant to nurse. Frustration occurs when these needs are not met; Overindulgence stems from such an ample meeting of these needs that the child is reluctant to progress beyond the stage. Both frustration and overindulgence lock some amount of the child's libido permanently into the stage in which they occur; both result in a fixation. If a child progresses normally through the stages, resolving each conflict and moving on, then little libido remains invested in each stage of development. But if he fixates at a particular stage, the method of obtaining satisfaction which characterized the stage will dominate and affect his adult personality. Freud (1905) proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages. 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 becomes important as sources of potential frustration (erogenous zones), pleasure or both. Freud 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. In describing human personality development as psychosexual Freud meant to convey that what develops is the way in which sexual energy accumulates and is discharged as we mature biologically. (NB Freud used the term 'sexual' in a very general way to mean all pleasurable actions and thoughts). Freud stress that the first five years of life are crucial to the formation of adult personality. The id must be controlled in order to satisfy social demands; this sets up a conflict between frustrated wishes and social norms. The ego and superego develop in order to exercise this control and direct the need for gratification into socially acceptable channels. Gratification centers of different areas of the body at different stages of growth, making the conflict at each stage psychosexual.

Stages of the psychosexual development Freud's model of psychosexual development Stage Age Range Erogenous zone Consequences fixation of psychologic

Oral

Birth1 year

Mouth

Orally aggressive: chewing gum and the ends of pencils, etc. Orally Passive: smoking, eating, kissing, oral sexual practices[4] Oral stage fixation might result in a passive, gullible, immature, manipulative personality. and Anal retentive: Obsessively organized, or excessively neat Anal expulsive: reckless, careless,

Anal

Bowel 13 years bladder elimination

defiant, disorganized, coprophiliac Oedipus complex (in boys and girls); according to Sigmund Freud. Electra complex (in girls); according to Carl Jung. sexual Sexual unfulfillment if fixation occurs in this stage. unsatisfactory

Phallic 36 years Genitalia

Latency 6puberty Genital Puberty death

Dormant feelings

Sexual interests Frigidity, impotence, mature relationships

The Oral Stage Oral phase(0-1 year) The oral stage in psychology is the term used by Sigmund Freud to describe the child's development during the first eighteen months of life, in which an infant's pleasure centers are in the mouth. This is the first of Freud's psychosexual stages. This is the infant's first relationship with its mother; it is a nutritive one. The length of this stage depends on the society. 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. Suckling and eating, however, compose the earliest memories for infants in every society. This stage holds special importance because some, especially those in tribal societies commonly found in the Southwest Pacific and Africa, consider the stomach to be the seat of emotions. The oral stage begins at birth, when the oral cavity is the primary focus of libidal energy. The child, of course, preoccupies himself with nursing, with the pleasure of sucking and accepting things into the mouth. The oral character who is frustrated at this stage, whose mother refused to nurse him on demand or who truncated nursing sessions early, is characterized

by pessimism, envy, suspicion and sarcasm. The overindulged oral character, whose nursing urges were always and often excessively satisfied, is optimistic, gullible, and is full of admiration for others around him. The stage culminates in the primary conflict of weaning, which both deprives the child of the sensory pleasures of nursing and of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. The stage lasts approximately one and one-half years.

The Anal Stage (1-3 years) 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 analretentive 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 got from holding on to their faeces when toddlers, and their mum's then insisting that they get rid of it by placing them on the potty until they perform! Not as daft as it sounds. The anal expulsive, on the other hand, underwent a liberal toilettraining 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**t'! An anal-expulsive personality is also messy, disorganized and rebellious.

The Phallic Stage(3 to 5 or 6 years) The phallic stage is the setting for the greatest, most crucial sexual conflict in Freud's model of development. In this stage, the child's erogenous zone is the genital region. As the child becomes more interested in his genitals,

and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one. In the young male, the Oedipus conflict stems from his natural love for his mother, a love which becomes sexual as his libidal energy transfers from the anal region to his genitals. Unfortunately for the boy, his father stands in the way of this love. The boy therefore feels aggression and envy towards this rival, his father, and also feels fear that the father will strike back at him. As the boy has noticed that women, his mother in particular, have no penises, he is struck by a great fear that his father will remove his penis, too. The anxiety is aggravated by the threats and discipline he incurs when caught masturbating by his parents. This castration anxiety outstrips his desire for his mother, so he represses the desire. Moreover, although the boy sees that though he cannot posses his mother, because his father does, he can posses her vicariously by identifying with his father and becoming as much like him as possible: this identification indoctrinates the boy into his appropriate sexual role in life. A lasting trace of the Oedipal conflict is the superego, the voice of the father within the boy. By thus resolving his incestuous conundrum, the boy passes into the latency period, a period of libidal dormancy. On the Electra complex, Freud was more vague. The complex has its roots in the little girl's discovery that she, along with her mother and all other women, lack the penis which her father and other men posses. Her love for her father then becomes both erotic and envious, as she yearns for a penis of her own. She comes to blame her mother for her perceived castration, and is struck by penis envy, the apparent counterpart to the boy's castration anxiety. The resolution of the Electra complex is far less clear-cut than the resolution of the Oedipus complex is in males; Freud stated that the resolution comes much later and is never truly complete. Just as the boy learned his sexual role by identifying with his father, so the girl learns her role by identifying with her mother in an attempt to posses her father vicariously. At the eventual resolution of the conflict, the girl passes into the latency period, though Freud implies that she always remains slightly fixated at the phallic stage.

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. Fixation at the phallic stage develops a phallic character, who is reckless, resolute, self-assured, and narcissistic--excessively vain and proud. The failure to resolve the conflict can also cause a person to be afraid or incapable of close love; Freud also postulated that fixation could be a root cause of homosexuality. Latency Period (puberty) The resolution of the phallic stage leads to the latency period, which is not a psychosexual stage of development, but a period in which the sexual drive lies dormant. Freud saw latency as a period of unparalleled repression of sexual desires and erogenous impulses. During the latency period, children pour this repressed libidal energy into asexual pursuits such as school, athletics, and same-sex friendships. But soon puberty strikes, and the genitals once again become a central focus of libidal energy. The Genital Stage (adult) In the genital stage, as the child's energy once again focuses on his genitals, interest turns to heterosexual relationships. The less energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual developments, the greater his capacity will be to develop normal relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, he remains fixated, particularly on the phallic stage, his development will be troubled as he struggles with further repression and defenses.

The Role of Conflict Each of the psychosexual stages is associated with a particular conflict that must be resolved before the individual can successfully advance to the next stage. The resolution of each of these conflicts requires the expenditure of sexual energy and the more energy that is expended at a particular stage the more the important characteristics of that stage remain with the individual as he matures psychologically. To explain this Freud suggested the analogy of military troops on the march. As the troops advance they are met by opposition or conflict. If bthey are highly successful in winning the battle (resolving the conflict) then most of the troops (libido) will be able to move on to the" next battle (stage). But the greater the difficulty encountered of any particular point the greater the need for troops to remain behind to fight and thus the fewer that will be able to go on to the next confrontation. Frustration, Overindulgence and Fixation Some people do not seem to be able to leave one stage and proceed on to the next. One reason for this may be that the needs of the developing individual at any particular stage may not have been adequately met in which case there is frustration. Or possibly the person's needs may have been so well satisfied that he is reluctant to leave the psychological benefits of a particular stage in which there is overindulgence. Both frustration and overindulgence (or any combination of the two) may lead to what psychoanalysts call fixation at a particular psychosexual stage. Fixation refers to the theoretical notion that a portion of the individual's libido has been permanently 'invested in a particular stage of his development. It is assumed that some libido is permanently invested in each psychosexual stage and thus each person will behave in some ways that are characteristic of infancy, or early childhood.

Four points: to test, but the evidence that has been gathered is not favourable crucial events (e.g., how the libido is used) are unobservable, and there are no good means to measure them here is an awfully long time between the occurence of the causal stimulus and its presumed effect; relationships between early events and later traits tend to be weak and inconsistent theory of development was conceived without studying children; rather, it was developed from patients' recollections, dreams and free associations Criticism of Freud's theory of psychosexual development Feminist critique Freud's theories were decidedly andocentric, which is why he has received a great deal of criticism from feminists, as well as from gender theory practitioners. Freud had difficulty incorporating female desire into his theories. Freud attempted to provide a theoretical explanation for feminine psychosexual development only rather late in his career. Freud personally confessed a lack of understanding of female sexuality and did not hold out hope that psychology would ever explain the phenomenon. Freud 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." 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. 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. Freud wrote: "girls feel deeply their lack of a sexual organ that is equal in value to the male one; they regard themselves on that account as inferior and this envy for the penis is the origin of a whole number of characteristic feminine reactions."

McLeod, S. A. (2008). Simply Psychology; Psychosexual Development.

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freud on psychosexual development. AN ASSIGNMENT ON P: psychology PRESENTED TO DR. epenyoug (LECTURER) DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES VERITAS UNIVERSITY ABUJA (THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF NIGERIA) OBEHIE CAMPUS BY Chris-worlu igwugwum VUG/POL/11/323

15TH june, 2012