Psychosexual development
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In Freudian Ego psychology, psychosexual development is a central element of the psychoanalytic sexual drive theory. Freud believed that personality developed through a series of childhood stages in which pleasure seeking energies from the child became focused on certain erogenous areas. An erogenous zone is characterized as an area of the body that is particularly sensitive to stimulation. The five psychosexual stages are the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital.[1] The erogenous zone associated with each stage serves as a source of pleasure. Being unsatisfied at any particular stage can result in fixation.[1] On the other hand, being satisfied can result in a healthy personality. Sigmund Freud proposed that if the child experienced frustration at any of the psychosexual developmental stages, they would experience anxiety that would persist into adulthood as a neurosis, a functional mental disorder.[2][3]
Background
Freudian psychosexual development
Sexual infantilism: in pursuing and satisfying their libido (sexual drive), the child might experience failure (parental and societal disapproval) and thus might associate anxiety with the given erogenous zone. To avoid anxiety, the child becomes fixated, preoccupied with the psychological themes related to the erogenous zone in question. The fixation persists into adulthood and underlies the personality and psychopathology of the individual. It may manifest as mental ailments such as neurosis, hysteria, "female hysteria", or personality disorder.
Stage[1] | Age Range[1] | Erogenous zone[1] | Consequences of psychologic fixation |
---|---|---|---|
Oral | Birth–1 year | Mouth | Orally aggressive: chewing gum and the ends of pencils, etc. Orally passive: smoking, eating, kissing, oral sexual practices manipulative personality.
|
Anal | 1–3 years | bladder elimination |
Anal retentive: Obsessively organized, or excessively neat Anal expulsive: reckless, careless, defiant, disorganized, coprophiliac |
Phallic | 3–6 years | Genitalia |
Oedipus complex (in boys and girls); according to Sigmund Freud. Electra complex (in girls); according to Carl Jung. Promiscuity and low self-esteem in both sexes. |
Latency | 6–puberty | Dormant sexual feelings | Immaturity and an inability to form fulfilling non-sexual relationships as an adult if fixation occurs in this stage. |
Genital | Puberty–death | Sexual interests mature | Frigidity, impotence, sexual perversion, great difficulty in forming a healthy sexual relationship with another person |
Id, Ego, and Superego
Agency | Description | Functions | Principles and Development |
---|---|---|---|
Id | The most primitive part of the mind, it contains instinctual drives and is the source of psychic energy. | Seeks immediate gratification of all desires, wants, and needs. | Operates according to the pleasure principle, which aims to reduce tension, avoid pain, and gain pleasure. Present from birth and is the reservoir of the libido. |
Ego | The part of the id that has been modified by the direct influence of the external world. | Regulates the drives of the id to suit the demands of reality. | Governed by the reality principle, it seeks to please the id's drive in realistic ways that will benefit in the long term. Emerges from the id and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity. |
Superego | The part of the personality that represents the internalization of parental and societal values. | Upholds societal standards, imposes moral behavior, and mediates between the id and ego. | Guided by moralistic and idealistic principles, it strives for perfection over mere pleasure or reality. Forms during the resolution of the Oedipus complex and represents the internalized ideals of parents and society. |
Oral stage
The first stage of psychosexual development is the
Weaning is the key experience in the infant's oral stage of psychosexual development, their first feeling of loss consequent to losing the physical intimacy of feeding at mother's breast. The child is not only deprived of the sensory pleasures of nursing but also of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. Yet, weaning increases the infant's self-awareness that they do not control the environment, and thus learns of delayed gratification, which leads to the formation of the capacities for independence (awareness of the limits of the self) and trust (behaviors leading to gratification). Yet, thwarting of the oral-stage – too much or too little gratification of desire – might lead to an oral-stage fixation, characterized by passivity, gullibility, immaturity, unrealistic optimism, which is manifested in a manipulative personality consequent to ego malformation. In the case of too much gratification, the child does not learn that they do not control the environment, and that gratification is not always immediate, thereby forming an immature personality.[7] In the case of too little gratification, the infant might become passive upon learning that gratification is not forthcoming, despite having produced the gratifying behavior.[8]
Anal stage
The second stage of psychosexual development is the anal stage, spanning from the age of eighteen months to three years,[9] wherein the infant's erogenous zone changes from the mouth (the upper digestive tract) to the anus (the lower digestive tract), while the ego formation continues. Toilet training is the child's key anal-stage experience, occurring at about the age of two years, and results in conflict between the id (demanding immediate gratification) and the ego (demanding delayed gratification) in eliminating bodily wastes, and handling related activities (e.g. manipulating excrement, coping with parental demands). The child may respond with defiance, resulting in an 'anal expulsive character'—often messy, reckless, and defiant—or with retention, leading to an 'anal retentive character'—typically neat, precise, and passive-aggressive.[7] The style of parenting influences the resolution of the id–ego conflict, which can be either gradual and psychologically uneventful, or which can be sudden and psychologically traumatic.
The ideal resolution of the id–ego conflict is in the child's adjusting to moderate parental demands that teach the value and importance of physical cleanliness and environmental order, thus producing a self-controlled adult. The outcome of this stage can permanently affect the individual's propensities towards possession and attitudes towards authority. Yet, if the parents make immoderate demands of the child, by overemphasizing toilet training, it might lead to the development of a compulsive personality, a person too concerned with neatness and order. If the child obeys the id, and the parents yield, they might develop a self-indulgent personality characterized by personal slovenliness and environmental disorder. If the parents respond to that, the child must comply, but might develop a weak sense of self, because it was the parents' will, and not the child's ego, which controlled the toilet training.
Phallic stage
The third stage of psychosexual development is the
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 possess. 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.[7]
This
Initially, Freud equally applied the Oedipus complex to the psychosexual development of boys and girls, but later developed the female aspects of the theory as the feminine Oedipus attitude and the negative Oedipus complex;[13] yet, it was his student–collaborator, Carl Jung, who coined the term Electra complex in 1913.[14][15] Nonetheless, Freud rejected Jung's term as psychoanalytically inaccurate: "that what we have said about the Oedipus complex applies with complete strictness to the male child only, and that we are right in rejecting the term 'Electra complex', which seeks to emphasize the analogy between the attitude of the two sexes".[16][17] 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 possess 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. 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.[7]
Oedipus: Despite mother being the parent who primarily gratifies the child's desires, the child begins forming a discrete sexual identity – "boy", "girl" – that alters the dynamics of the parent and child relationship; the parents become the focus of infantile libidinal energy. The boy focuses his libido (sexual desire) upon his mother, and focuses jealousy and emotional rivalry against his father – because it is he who sleeps with mother. To facilitate uniting him with his mother, the boy's id wants to kill father (as did Oedipus), but the ego, pragmatically based upon the reality principle, knows that the father is the stronger of the two males competing to possess the one female. Nevertheless, the boy remains ambivalent about his father's place in the family, which is manifested as fear of castration by the physically greater father; the fear is an irrational, subconscious manifestation of the infantile Id.[18]
Electra: Whereas boys develop
Psychologist Karen Horney has disputed this theory, calling it inaccurate and demeaning to women. She proposed that, in fact men experience feelings of inferiority because they cannot give birth to children, a concept she referred to as womb envy.[20]
Psychologic defense: In both sexes,
Dénouement: Unresolved psychosexual competition for the opposite-sex parent might produce a phallic-stage fixation leading a girl to become a woman who continually strives to dominate men (viz. penis envy), either as an unusually seductive woman (high self-esteem) or as an unusually submissive woman (low self-esteem). In a boy, a phallic-stage fixation might lead him to become an aggressive, over-ambitious, vain man. Therefore, the satisfactory parental handling and resolution of the Oedipus complex and of the Electra complex are most important in developing the infantile super-ego, because, by identifying with a parent, the child internalizes morality, thereby, choosing to comply with societal rules, rather than having to reflexively comply in fear of punishment.
Latency stage
The fourth stage of psychosexual development is the
Genital stage
The fifth stage of psychosexual development is the genital stage that spans puberty through adult life, and thus represents most of a person's life; its purpose is the psychological detachment and independence from the parents. The genital stage affords the person the ability to confront and resolve their remaining psychosexual childhood conflicts. As in the phallic stage, the genital stage is centered upon the genitalia, but the sexuality is consensual and adult, rather than solitary and infantile. The psychological difference between the phallic and genital stages is that the ego is established in the latter; the person's concern shifts from primary-drive gratification (instinct) to applying secondary process-thinking to gratify desire symbolically and intellectually by means of friendships, a love relationship, family and adult responsibility.
Criticisms
Scientific
A criticism of the scientific validity of the psychoanalytical theory of human psychosexual development is that
Freud stated that his patients commonly had memories and fantasies of childhood seduction. Critics hold that these were more likely to have been constructs which Freud created and forced upon his patients.
Feminist
Some feminists criticize Freud's psychosexual development theory as being
Anthropologic
Contemporary cultural considerations have questioned the normative presumptions of the Freudian psychodynamic perspective that posits the son–father conflict of the
The anthropologist
See also
References
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- ^ "Introduction to Sigmund Freud, Module on Psychosexual Development". Cla.purdue.edu. Archived from the original on 2012-12-11. Retrieved 2013-08-01.
- ^ Bullock, A., Trombley, S. (1999) The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Harper Collins:London pp. 643, 705
- ^ Myre, Sim (1974) Guide to Psychiatry, 3rd ed. Churchill Livingstone:Edinburgh and London, p. 396
- ^ Myre, Sim (1974) Guide to Psychiatry 3rd ed., Churchill Livingstone: Edinburgh and London pp. 35, 407
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- ^ Murphy, Bruce (1996). Benét's Reader's Encyclopedia Fourth edition, HarperCollins Publishers:New York p. 310
- ^ Bell, Robert E. (1991) Women of Classical Mythology: A Biographical Dictionary Oxford University Press:California pp.177–78
- ^ Hornblower, S., Spawforth, A. (1998) The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization pp. 254–55
- ISBN 978-0-14-013797-2.
- ^ Scott, Jill (2005) Electra after Freud: Myth and Culture Cornell University Press p. 8.
- ^ Jung, Carl (1970). Psychoanalysis and Neurosis. Princeton University Press.
- ^ Sigmund Freud, On Sexuality (London 1991) p. 375
- ^ Bishop, Paul (2000). "Sigmund Freud 1856–1939". In Konzett, Matthias (ed.). Encyclopaedia of German Literature. London: Routledge.
- ^ Bullock, A., Trombley, S. (1999) The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Harper Collins:London pp. 607, 705
- ^ Bullock, A., Trombley, S. (1999) The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Harper Collins:London pp. 259, 705
- ^ "Womb envy | psychology". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
- ^ Bullock, A., Trombley, S. (1999) The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Harper Collins:London pp. 205, 107
- ^ Frank Cioffi (2005) "Sigmund Freud" entry The Oxford Guide to Philosophy Oxford University Press:New York pp. 323–324
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