Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and His Psycho-sexual Development Stages

I am just about to begin my revision for tomorrow's exams. One of the topics that I need to cover is "Human Psychological Development" and one of the popular theories to describe this event is Freud's Psycho-sexual Development Stages. Let's see what once a super popular psychologist has to say about how we develop psychologically. What I find controversial about Freud's theory on personality development is that he asserted that an unsuccessful completion of a stage would mean that person becomes fixated at that zone (erogenous) and would become either over or under-indulged once he or she becomes an adult.

Here I present how Freud divided the stages of human psychological development.
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Oral Stage (Birth to 18 months): At this stage, the child will focus on oral pleasures (primarily sucking). Too much or too little gratification can result in an Oral Fixation or Oral Personality which is evidence by a preoccupation with oral activities--a stronger tendency to smoke, drink alcohol, over eat, or bite his or her nails. Personality-wise, these individuals may turn out to be unduly dependent upon others, gullible, and perpetual followers, or they may also fight these urges and develop pessimism and aggression toward others.

Anal Stage (18 months to three years): The child’s focus of pleasure in this stage is on eliminating and retaining feces. Through society’s pressure, mainly via parents, the child has to learn to control anal stimulation. In terms of personality, after-effect of an anal fixation during this stage can result in an obsession with cleanliness, perfection, and control (anal retentive). On the opposite end of the spectrum, they may become messy and disorganized (anal expulsive).

Phallic Stage (age three to six). The pleasure zone has now switched to the genitals. Freud believed that during this stage boys develop unconscious sexual desires for their mother. As a consequence, he becomes rivals with his father and sees him as competition for the mother’s affection. However, boys also develop a fear that their father will punish them for these feelings, such as by castrating them. This group of feelings is known as Oedipus Complex.

Later it was added that girls also go through a similar situation, developing unconscious sexual attraction to their father. Although Freud strongly disagreed with this, it has been termed the Electra Complex by more recent psychoanalysts.

According to Freud, out of fear of castration and due to the strong competition of his father, boys eventually decide to identify with him rather than fight him. By identifying with his father, the boy develops masculine characteristics and identifies himself as a male, and represses his sexual feelings toward his mother. A fixation at this stage could result in sexual deviancies (both overindulging and avoidance) and weak or confused sexual identity according to psychoanalysts.

Latency Stage (age six to puberty). It is during this stage that sexual urges remain repressed and children interact and play mostly with same sex peers.

Genital Stage (puberty onward). The final stage of psychosexual development begins at the start of puberty when sexual urges are once again awakened. Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their sexual urges onto opposite sex peers, with the primary focus of pleasure is the genitals.

Can we identify a few illogical, or I would prefer absurd, relationships that Freud had made between certain life events and the sexual pleasure? To all mothers in the world, isn't it creepy to find that your little precious innocent babies find sexual pleasure when you breastfeed them? Isn't it extremely worrying to find your toddlers find sexual joy when excrete feces?

"I think I didn't get enough of my mother's tits. That's why I smoke a cigar."

wAllahu 'alam