Psychosexual Stages of Development
From Encyclopedia of Sex and Sexuality
Toward the end of the nineteenth century and with the waning of the Victorian era, new ideas about the mind began to appear and take currency. These focused on people’s emotional states, inner feelings, and somewhat daringly, the relationship of sexual drives to one’s overall well-being. The greatest contribution to this innovative way of thinking was made by Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), the founder of psychoanalysis. His discoveries of the unconscious and of infantile sexuality led to the development of important new ideas in the field of general psychology.
Before Freud, little thought was given to the mental life of children; they were to be “civilized” by training and discipline (and undoubtedly by a good thrashing when appropriate). The mind was seen as a tabula rasa, a “clean state,” that accumulated stimuli from the outside world. Freud’s revolutionary concept was that the mind is actually composed of innate drives and unconscious fantasies and wishes. According to him, the two most dominant drives are the hunger drive and the sexual drive. Freud called the sexual drive “the sexual instinct of the libido.”
All people are born with sexual desires and the wish to fulfill sexual needs. Freud noted that sexuality begins in infancy, and this led him to map out a series of psychosexual stages of development. He came to understand these stages from the psychoanalysis of his adult patients, who, in the course of their treatment, revealed to him their repressed, unconscious sexual fantasies. He saw these fantasies as the keys to their illnesses, emotional difficulties, and neurotic symptomatology. This was an original new “paradigm” of mental life. It made Freud one of the most important figures of the twentieth century and created an extraordinary interest in psychoanalysis. Ernest Jones, the English psychoanalyst, called Freud the “Darwin of the Mind.”
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[edit] The Oral Stage
The first of Freud’s psychosexual stages is the oral phase. Freud reconstructed this from his patients’ accounts of their early lives and from direct infant observation. He believed that in the earliest stages of infancy the baby receives enormous gratification from being fed by its mother or its mother substitute. Sucking at the breast and being well nourished is the model of ultimate satisfaction. It is at the root of the mother-infant relationship. (That the feeding situation and bonding with the mother is critical to future wellbeing is supported by an enormous body of literature.) Freud saw in this oral phase a generalized sexual state, not sexual in the reproductive sense of intercourse, but in the sense that it creates excitation, a building up of tension, and a release in intense pleasure. It is the residue of this state that we find in the adult pleasures of kissing and in the many forms of oral sexual gratification.
[edit] The Anal Stage
As the baby becomes a toddler, biological maturation and psychological development come together around control of the sphincter muscle and the beginning of toilet training. This is when the baby becomes more independent, being able to control its own needs and bodily functions. Of course, the proper age for toilet training varies with each child, and the proper negotiation of toilet training needs considerable care and balance to prevent forcing a toddler to be independent too early or, on the other hand, to not allowing him or her to take control into his or her own hands. Freud called this stage of development the anal stage. It usually occurs around the second year of life, and like the oral stage, was described by Freud as a psychosexual stage. It is also a critical phase in the relationship between the baby and its parents. The child becomes proud of its independence in caring for its bodily functions. Freud gave the famous example of the child who sees his feces as a “gift” to his parents and will often not feel ashamed at presenting them with a sample. Parents must be willing to accept their toddlers’ feelings of accomplishment and encourage their newly won victories in motor control and psychological maturity.
[edit] The Phallic Stage
Roughly between their third and fifth years children begin to focus on their genitals. They begin to derive pleasure from touching the penis and the vagina—much like the feelings that come with early states of arousal. It is at this stage that children become intensely curious about the genitals of their parents and of other children, in particular their siblings. They like to examine and touch each other’s genitals. Boys feel it is important that their penis can grow and become big and hard. At this time children also discover the pleasures of masturbatory activity. According to Freud, they also discover the anatomical differences between the sexes. Girls discover that they are without a penis, which can make them envious of boys and lower their self-esteem. Boys, on the other hand, believe that they can lose their penis (which is what they sometimes think happened to girls) and become filled with “castration anxiety.” According to Freud, castration anxiety and penis envy play significant roles in the character development of children. They also become central to the development of the oedipal constellation that overlaps with and then develops separately from the phallic stage.
[edit] The Oedipal Stage
Perhaps the most important of all of Freud’s psychosexual stages of development, the oedipal stage stands at the center of all future personality development. It is at the foundation of our character traits, our identification, and our mature sexuality. During the oedipal stage children become attached to what Freud called the “family romance.” Boys become possessive of their mothers and sees them as their most important love objects. The attachment also makes them fearful of their fathers, who, they believe, become their rivals in love for their mothers. They develop aggressive feelings towards their fathers and would like to replace them as their mothers’ loved ones. This can lead to unbearable anxiety and strong fears of castration. Girls, on the other hand, begins to fall in love with their fathers and wants to replace their mothers as their fathers’ love objects. They develop tremendous rivalry with their mothers (whom they also love), and become convinced that this aggression toward their mothers is what resulted in them not having a penis, or in having “lost” their penises.
It was this development that Freud called the Oedipus complex, and it is in living through and successfully negotiating the oedipal drama that children learn to overcome the frustration of the incest taboo, the urge to play an adult sexual role and to tame their instinctual drives, making use of them to develop the ego skills, their sense of themselves as children of worth. Freud took the idea of the Oedipus complex from Greek mythology, in particular from the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. In this play a baby, abandoned at birth, returns to his native Thebes as King Oedipus and unknowingly falls in love with his mother. He has sex with her and is punished—blinded and sent into the wilderness to die—by the wrath of the gods. Freud believed that the reason Oedipus Rex has maintained its power over audiences for thousands of years is that it touches our own inner unconscious oedipal drives. He also felt that the power of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet rests in the young Danish prince’s oedipal love for his mother.
The oedipal period is one of tremendous volatility. Parents must be able to help their children renounce their oedipal wishes without feeling that they are unloved or unsupported in their struggle. Parents who exploit the oedipal stage, either by overstimulation or actual sexual seduction, can cause lasting damage to their children. It is difficult enough, even in healthy environments, for children to come to terms with their oedipal feelings, and it often takes many years to work these feelings through and resolve them.
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[edit] The Latency Stage
Freud believed that following the stormy oedipal stage a period of biological and psychological quiescence occurs. He called this period, which usually starts when the child is around seven, the latency stage. There is less focus on inner drives and sexual energy. The emphasis is on the ego and cognitive development. It is a period of great intellectual development in children and the beginning of their ability and efforts to relate to others in the world. It is a period in which children normally focus on their education and on team sports. Children experiencing the latency stage are also noted for their shyness and asceticism and their first interest in moral, spiritual, or religious feelings. They often become detached from the family drama of earlier years and can find comfort in isolation and introspection. The Freudian theory of the latency stage has been greeted with considerable controversy because there is evidence to show that by no means do all children give up their inner sexual drive, their tempestuousness, or become generally pacific and malleable in the years between seven and the onset of puberty.
[edit] Puberty
Adolescence and puberty bring together the onset of reproductive sexuality and a reawakening of psychic drives from early childhood. The residues of the oral, anal, phallic, and oedipal stages all find new outlets in the formation of adolescent sexuality and identity. Puberty is often a turbulent phase, with bodily and hormonal changes meeting head on with sexual appetites and sexual fantasies. Adolescents who, in the course of the latency period, have resolved their pregenital and oedipal strivings, will find themselves able to transfer childhood sexual feelings toward parents and siblings to suitable members of the opposite sex. This is the time when dating begins and “falling in love” is common. It is also the period when sexual life can become quite active in teenagers. The strains of these sudden developments can also cause promiscuous behavior on the one hand or isolation and withdrawal on the other. This is also the phase when identification with parents, if not adequately transferred to relevant partners, can lead to a variety of sexual preferences. In some cases, guilt and anxiety affect teenagers so severely that they are unable to find themselves, suffer from mood swings, rebelliousness, and even asocial and delinquent behavior. The adolescent stage is for many a time of confusion; the young person is being bombarded by inner drives, outside cultural forces, and the technological world of television and movies. It is also when teenagers will often experiment with alcohol and drugs and develop odd eating habits. The adolescent is, at the same time, trying to forge ahead with educational and career plans. In order to win this struggle for maturity and independence, teenagers must seek ways to overcome the internal and external pressures that surround and often overwhelm them.
[edit] The Final Stage
The final stage is the person’s gradual movement from adolescence to mature adulthood. It is the stage that involves the stabilizing of one’s sense of identity, the resolution of educational and career decisions, and the ultimate choice of a sex partner and a life partner, which usually leads to marriage and reproduction. In this way new families are started and the life cycle begins anew. There is no specific timetable for the entering and resolving of the final stage. Individuals vary tremendously in their ability to find themselves, to feel comfortable in committing themselves to a partner, and in their ability to take on the responsibility of having a family. In modern times, cultural pressures, economic needs, and sexual behaviors shift rapidly and widely. There are fewer traditional solutions or answers to the urgent issue of finding oneself at ease with oneself and happy in the company of others.
