What is psychosexual development?

Introduction

Psychosexual development is a major developmental theory, proposed by Sigmund Freud
, which suggests that humans behave as they do because they are constantly seeking pleasure. During different periods, or stages, of life, the types of pleasure a person seeks will change. Each change in body location where the person finds pleasure represents one stage in psychosexual development. There are a total of five stages; four of them are named for the primary body part from which a person derives pleasure during a given time in life.

Psychosexual Stages

The first stage is the oral stage, which begins at birth and ends around one and a half years of age. Pleasure is gained from activities of the mouth, such as sucking at a mother’s nipple to obtain nourishment. The purpose of this behavior is to secure physical survival, as the infant depends on parents for food. The infant is entirely dependent, seeks immediate gratification of needs, and does not consider other people’s needs or wishes or even recognize others as separate human beings. The selfish energy that drives the infant at this age is called libido and is attributed to the child’s id, the pleasure-seeking part of a person.

The second stage is the anal stage, named for the child’s preoccupation with feces and urine, as this is generally the time of toilet training. This stage begins at age one and a half and ends around age three. The child now sees herself or himself as separate from other people and begins to assert wishes. The child becomes more demanding and controlling and often refuses parents’ wishes, but the child also learns to delay gratification and put up with frustration. For example, the child will learn to hold in a bowel movement until a time convenient for the caregiver, rather than eliminate it as soon as pressure is felt on the sphincter. Learning to be assertive and autonomous and learning to delay gratification are the two most important advances for the child that occur during this stage of development. They make up an important part of a child’s ego, the part of the psyche that defines who a person is and what a person wants from life.

Between age three and age six, the child passes through the phallic stage
of psychosexual development. The child now knows who she or he is and who her or his parents are, and the child begins to have a sense of rules and regulations. Behavior becomes more moral, and the opinions of others begin to gain importance. The child begins to love others and wants to be loved by them. To ensure that others will continue to love and cherish her or him, the child learns to suppress pleasure derived from the genitalia because of social pressures against behaviors such as masturbation. According to Freud, children at this age fall in love with their parent of the opposite sex and envy their same-sex parent. This pattern is called the Oedipus complex
in boys and the Electra complex in girls. The Oedipus complex results in the fear that the boy may be hated by his father for loving his mother. To prevent being punished (the feared punishment being castration), the boy begins to identify with and behave like his father and slowly learns to distance himself from his mother. Through this process of modeling and imitating the father, the boy learns rules and becomes a moral being. In the Electra complex, the girl feels that, because she has no penis, she has already received the ultimate punishment of castration. To compensate for the resultant feelings of envy of the male’s penis, she decides that pregnancy will be important one day, as this is something not obtainable by the male. The girl’s desire to bear a child begins. As she knows that only women bear children, she begins to identify with and model after her mother and begins to distance herself from her father. The most important change in this stage of development is the child’s acquisition of a superego, an internal sense of what is right and what is wrong that guides behavior and inhibits illegal or immoral acts.

The distancing from the same-sex parent in the phallic stage of development, which occurs around age five or age six, is seen as ushering in the latency stage. At this time, children withdraw from the opposite sex and no longer seek pleasure from their own bodies. Instead, they reorient their behavior toward skill acquisition and learning, as well as peer interaction. This makes them ready for school and play with their peer group. Not until approximately age thirteen will the desire for pleasure reawaken.

At around age thirteen, the adolescent enters the final stage of psychosexual development, the genital stage. At this time, the person has matured enough to be able to love others in an unselfish and altruistic manner and should be willing to put the welfare of others ahead of her or his own. Empathy and caring for humans begins, and the libido, which was selfishly directed in infancy, is now directed toward giving pleasure to others. The desire awakens to be intimately involved with a person of the opposite sex, according to Freud. This desire, however, is aim-inhibited, is complemented by feelings of affection, and does not find expression until the person has matured beyond adolescence. Mature sexuality develops as an activity that is pleasuring for both people involved, is the result of mature love, and serves procreation. Such maturity is the final goal of this stage of development.

Development of Ego and Superego

The two most important outcomes of psychosexual development are the development of the ego and superego and the development of psychopathology (emotional or mental illnesses or problems of sufficient severity to warrant treatment by a psychologist or psychotherapist) if the stages are not successfully mastered. The anal and phallic stages are particularly critical in the development of the ego and superego. During the anal stage, ego development progresses rapidly as the child learns what he or she likes and what distinguishes him or her from other people. In the phallic stage, the development of the superego occurs as a result of the Oedipus and Electra complexes.

Only if the child accepts the rules of society—that is, falls out of love with the opposite-sex parent and identifies with the same-sex parent—is she or he able to feel free of fear of punishment. Thus, the child learns to live by rules and regulations out of fear of punishment. The internalized sense of rules is represented by the child’s superego. The superego serves to counteract the selfish and pleasure-seeking actions of the id, which is present at birth and remains with all human beings throughout the life span. Often, the superego and id will come into conflict because a selfish desire expressed by the id is being opposed by the superego. The ego will then mediate between the two and will attempt to come up with a compromise solution. For example, a college student who has to study for an exam sometimes is overcome by the desire to attend a party instead. This desire is driven by the id. The superego then admonishes the student to stay home and continue to study without any breaks. The ego may finally step in and mediate, and the student may decide to study for two more hours, take a break for pleasure for an hour, and return to study some more.

Development of Psychopathology

The development of psychopathology is closely related to psychosexual development. First, pathology is seen as a possible consequence of fixation—that is, the child’s failure to resolve a given stage and advance beyond it. Second, psychopathology may be caused by regression
—the return to an earlier stage of development because of conflicts or problems. Adults with oral pathology, those who either did not move beyond or regressed to the oral stage, are said to be dependent and afraid to be alone, or else very hostile, evidencing verbal biting sarcasm to prevent getting too close to people. People with anal pathology can be either very retentive (miserly, tense, orderly, and constricted) or expulsive (impulsive, disorganized, free-spending, and venting). Both types of pathology are severe and were considered by Freud to be not treatable through psychoanalysis. Only pathology arising from the phallic stage lends itself well to treatment. It is referred to as neurosis
and implies that the person has significant conflicts between id wishes and superego restrictions that cannot be successfully mediated by the ego.

Neurotic pathology is seen as a result of a boy’s failure to pass through the Oedipus complex or a girl’s failure to pass through the Electra complex. In both cases, the child may fail to withdraw attachment to the same-sex parent or may fail to identify with the same-sex parent. Thus, healthy development is hampered and stopped. The child will live with the conflict of having a superego that is not completely developed and the awareness that the id’s wish to possess the opposite-sex parent is inappropriate. The superego chastises the person yet is unable to stop the ego. Conflict is ever-present in the person, as the wishes of the id cannot be controlled by the incomplete superego but certainly can be recognized by the superego as inappropriate. This pathology sometimes leads the person to regress to earlier stages of development and develop an oral or anal personality. If there is no regression, only fixation at the phallic stage, the person will show traits of neurosis, such as being focused on gaining pleasure for the self in general, being centered on seduction, developing symptoms of hysteria, or developing physical complaints.

Pathology does not arise from the latency or genital stages, as progression to the latency stage implies successful resolution of the Oedipus and Electra complexes: The person has matured psychosexually beyond a point of development at which neurotic pathology develops. This is true because the child is considered to have developed all necessary structures of the self, or psyche, by the end of the phallic phase. The personality structure and characteristics evidenced by the child at that time are deemed lifelong traits and are not prone to significant future change.

Psychosexual development is critical from Freud’s perspective primarily because it is responsible for the development of a healthy self-structure that consists of an id, an ego, and a superego. Further, it is the most important factor in the development of the psychopathology of human beings. Mastery or failure in the realm of psychosexual development has extremely important implications for a person’s functioning and mental health.

Historic Context

The Freudian stages through which psychosexual development progresses must be considered within the historical framework present at the time that Freud conceptualized them, that is, from the perspective of the late 1800s and early 1900s. The spirit of the times was much different from that of today, particularly with regard to how freely people were allowed to express themselves in general and with regard to sexuality in particular. It was a time in which morals and ethics forbade many normal human urges and resulted in people having to deny large parts or aspects of themselves.

This atmosphere of self-denial resulted in many different symptoms, especially among women, who were expected to follow even stricter codes of behavior than men were. For example, sometimes people were observed to have paralysis of a hand that could not be explained by any neurological damage. Freud was one of the first physicians to recognize that this paralysis had psychological rather than physical causes. He hypothesized that the strong moral restrictions placed on the individual were directly contrary to what the person wanted to do (perhaps masturbate, a definite transgression of permissible behavior). He believed that this person had a very strong id without a sufficiently strong superego to control it. The person’s unconscious mind had to devise some other strategy to keep the id controlled—hence the paralysis of the hand. The idea that the individual has an unconscious was a crucial development in psychology and has been maintained to date by many types of psychologists, though not by all. It is directly related to the theory of psychosexual development.

Impact on Psychology

Psychosexual development was proposed by Freud strictly to explain why certain symptoms developed in individuals. His ideas had an extremely strong impact on the future of psychology, as they were complex and explained human behavior in an understandable manner (given the spirit of the times in which they were formulated). Many followers applied Freud’s theories to the treatment of psychopathology, and the profession of psychoanalysis
was born. Psychoanalysts specialized in the treatment of persons with neuroses; they did so through daily sessions that lasted fifty minutes. Treatment often continued for many years. Only through this approach, psychoanalysts believed, could they effect changes in a person’s psychic structure—that is, in the person’s ego and the relationship between the id and superego. The profession of psychoanalysis is still a prominent one, but many changes have been made. Few psychoanalysts today follow a strictly Freudian approach to the development of a person’s psyche; new ways of understanding human development and behavior have been developed. Psychoanalysis and psychosexual development, however, remain important features of psychology’s history. They were important milestones in the discipline of clinical psychology, the branch of psychology concerned with the treatment of mental illness.

Bibliography

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Freud, Sigmund. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New York: Garden City, 1952. Print.

Freud, Sigmund. Three Case Histories. New York: Collier, 1963. Print.

Lauretis, Teresa de. Freud’s Drive: Psychoanalysis, Literature, and Film. New York: Palgrave, 2008. Print.

Newman, Barbara, and Philip R. Newman. Development through Life: A Psychosocial Approach. 11th ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2012. Print.

Quindeau, Ilka. Seduction and Desire: The Psychoanalytic Theory of Sexuality since Freud. London: Karnac, 2013. Print.

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