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Sigmund Freud human development
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Sigmund Freud developed the psychosexual stages of development to describe the chronological process of development that took place from birth through later adulthood. The stages of psychosexual are oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital. Freud developed that as children grow they progress from self-pleasing sexual activity to reproductive activity. Through this developmental process one will develop adult personality. Freud put much emphasis on sexual context of how ones libido, which is one sexual desires played a role in each stage of development. Freud emphasizes that individuals will strive to obtain pleasures in each stage of development, which becomes the basis of ones personality.
The first stage of the psychosexual is the oral
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During this stage focus on the development when one starts to show interest in their sexual body parts, gender identity, the first interest in the opposite sex. Freud states that children during this stage often struggle with desires toward their parents of the opposite sex. During this stage children develop a curiosity towards their genitals and my also learn that the there is a difference in size among each individual. Freud developed the term Oedipus and Electra complex, which described the difference in the phallic stage between male and females. Oedipus, which refers to the story of how a man killed his father unknowingly and eventually marrying his own mother that he was also unaware of. Freud states that during the phallic stage boys fall in love with their mothers, they view their mothers as love objects. Though Freud emphasizes that boys saw mothers as love object he had a different opinion of girls and fathers. He referred to the Electra complex as girl seeking for their father’s attentions and openly seeks their father’s approval. I would say Freud might be the cause of the terms mamma’s boy and daddy’s girl. The oral, anal and phallic stage plays major parts of development especially in the development of trust, gender identity, positive and negative emotions. Freud stresses that during this stage it’s important for parents to respond positively to children during this time where sexuality will be
The oral stage takes place from birth until age 1, which involves the infant’s mouth as the focus of gratification derived from the pleasure of oral exploration of his or her environment and receiving primary nourishment from one’s mother’s breast. In addition to this, the anal phase takes place from age 1 until age 3, which involves the infant’s more erotic zone changing from the mouth to the anus. Finally, the phallic stage takes place from age 3 until age 6, which involves the child’s genitalia becoming his or her primary aphrodisiacal zone. It is in this third infantile development stage that children become aware of their bodies and the bodies of others. They gratify physical curiosity by undressing and exploring each other and their genitals, and so learn the physical and sexual differences between genders. These stages reflect base levels of desire, but they also involve fear of loss and mistreatment. To keep all of this conflict buried in one’s unconscious, Freud argued that one develops defenses: selective perception, selective memory, denial, displacement, projection, regression, fear of intimacy, and fear of death, among
Through case study, the psychodynamic approach was developed by Sigmund Freud. Freud visited Charcot’s, a laboratory in Paris investigating people suffering from hysteria. There, Freud began patient case studies (Crain, p. 254). Freud developed 5 stages of human development known as the Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency and Genital stages. The Oral stage is from the ages of birth to 18 months. This stage engages in oral activities such as sucking. Next the Anal stage begins around age 18 months to 3 years of age. Freud suggests that during the Anal stage a child focuses on the pleasure of purging from the rectal area. The Phallic stages, none as the masturbation stage, when a child get’s pleasure from focusing on his genital areas usually happens during ages 3 years to 6 years of age. After the Phallic stage come the Latency stages. Latency is when children at the ages of 6 to 12 years old work to develop cognitive and interpersonal skills suppressing sexual interests but those 12 years and older fall into the Genital stages. During the Genital stage those suppressed sexual interests re-occur and the need to find gratification dependent on finding a partner (Craig & Dunn, p 12)
In "The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman", Freud discusses a case of a young woman brought to him by her parents for treatment as a homosexual. Although he states that Psychoanalysis is not truly a tool for curing homosexuality, but one to help those with inner conflict in one particular area or another, he attempts to study the girl to see if Psychoanalysis could be of any help to her. Once he realized that the girl had a deep rooted bitterness towards men, he called off his study of her and told her parents that if they were to seek more psychoanalysis for her it should be sought from a woman. Prior to this discovery he found a few things of interest that may have attributed to her choice of sexual object.
Essentially, a boy feels like he is competing with his father for possession of his mother. He views his father as a rival for her attention and affection. In psychoanalytic theory, the Oedipus complex refers to the child’s desire for sexual involvement with the opposite sex parent, usually a boy’s erotic attention to his mother (Wood et al, 366). Freud’s complex is named after a character in an ancient tragedy, Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. The main character accidently kills his father and marries his mother. But when it is referencing to females, the complex is called the Elektra complex, it is also after a similar play but a woman is the main character. These plays were popular during the 19th century in Europe, and Freud believed their popularity was because of the repeating theme, love for one’s opposite-sex parent. This represented a universal conflict that all human beings must resolve early on in their development (Cherry). With this assumption, Freud claimed that during the phallic stage, boys seek their mother’s attention and behave in a hostile way towards their fathers. Usually, boys resolve the Oedipus complex by identifying with his father and suppressing his sexual feelings for his
Personality, by definition, is the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual 's distinctive character. It is believed that the majority of a person’s personality is formed by the age of six and stays constant throughout their entire lives no matter the time or setting. Famous psychologist Sigmund Freud believed that personality is developed in the five psychosexual stages and that everyone goes through the same stages in the same order. The five psychosexual stages are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Each of the psychosexual stages focus on a specific part of the body called the erogenous zones, which are area of the body that produce pleasure, and Freud believed that if an individual had either an overindulgence
Freud emphasized that early childhood experiences are important to the development of the adult personality, proposing that childhood development took place over five stages; oral, anal. Phallic, latent and genital. The phallic stage is the most important stage which contains the Oedipus complex. This is where the child (age 4 - 6 yrs) posses the opposite sex parent and wants rid of the same sex parent. Freud argued that if the conflict is not resolved in childhood then it could cau...
According to the founding father of psychology, Sigmund Freud, there are five different developmental stages that we must pass through in childhood in order to become fulfilled individuals. What Freud argued was that we all go through certain sexual stages in childhood that we move through for biological reasons. He argu...
Freud believed that a person’s personality is most influenced by the first three stages of psychosexual development: the oral, anal, and phallic. The development of a person in these three stages occurs between the first five years of his or her life. After he or she go through a latency stage before entering the final stage, also known as the genital stage, which occurs around puberty through adulthood. Erikson agrees with Freud on his theory of infantile sexuality, but disagrees that a person’s personality is only based on that aspect. All of Erikson’s stages are present at birth, in latent form, and gradually unravels according to their social surroundings. According to Manning (1988), “The Identity vs. Role Confusion is the most crucial stage of the developmental process. Adults and peers that the person surrounds themselves with ultimately determines whether or not...
Freud emphasizes on the life history of individuals. As a result, he created 3 parts of human personalities. The first one being Id which is the largest portion of the mind. This portion is unconscious which results in being present at birth. The next one is ego; this portion is conscious and begins to emerge in early infancy. Lastly is superego which is the conscience. This part begins to develop from ages three to six. Freud also explains the five psychosexual stages which are oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. “Psychoanalytic theory suggested that personality is mostly established by the age of five.” (Cherry, n.d.). All five psychosexual stages help establish a personality at a young age.
Freud believed that humans develop through stages based on particular erogenous zones. Freud theorized that to gain a healthy personality as an adult, a person would have to successfully complete a certain sequence of five stages. Within the five stages of Freud’s psychosexual development theory, Freud assumed there would be major consequences if any stage was not completed successfully. The stages, in order, were the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. In general, Freud believed that an unsuccessful completion of any stage would make a person become fixated on that particular stage. The outcome would lead the person to either over indulge or under indulge the failed stage during adulthood. Freud truly believed that the outcomes of the psychosexual stages played a major part in the development of the human personality. Eventually, these outcomes would become different driving forces in every human being’s personality. The driving forces would determine how a person would interact with the world around them. The results from Freud’s theory about the stages of psychosexual development led Freud to create the concept of the human psyche; Freud’s biggest contribution to
Developmental psychology is an area of research dedicated to the understanding of child-development. Throughout history many theories have been used to attempt to explain the complex process. Two of those theorists, Freud and Erikson, were instrumental in creating a foundation for child-psychology to build on. From a Freudian perspective, human development is centered on psychosexual theory. Psychosexual theory indicates that maturation of the sex drives underlies stages of personality development. Alternatively, Erikson is considered a neo-freudian scholar who developed psychosocial theory. In Erikson models there are eight major conflicts that occur during the course of an individual’s life.
For Freud, psychosexual theory occurred when personality arises, as it tries to resolve conflicts between unconscious sexual and aggressive impulses and the societal demands to suppress these impulses. In general, psychoanalytic theorists are permeated with notions of human development, and how the child changes during the course of his maturation in an explicit and implicit perspective.
Sigmund Freud 's theory of the Oedipus complex describes the ideas and emotions that exist within the unconscious mind of children concerning their desire to possess their mothers sexually and kill their fathers. Freud believed that this complex occurred in both male and female children, with both sexes wishing to possess their mothers and eliminate the threat of their fathers who they competed with for the attention of their mothers. Freud believed that the Oedipus complex occurred during what he referred to as the phallic stage of development, the third of the five stages of a child 's psychosexual development which occurs when a child is between the ages of three and six. According to Freud 's theory, children direct their developing sexual desire toward
Sigmund Freud proposed a theory of psychoanalytic development; he stated that early childhood experiences and practices affect later development in adulthood. Freud’s stages of psychosexual development comprised of five stages: the oral stage (0 – 1 year), the anal stage (1 – 3 years), the phallic stage (3 – 6 years), the latency period (6 – puberty) and the genital stage (puberty –
The theory does a good job at delineating the stages of psychosexual development; our childhood has a great influence on our personalities. Referring to Freud’s ‘psychosexual stages’, it is very clear that parents’ role in an infant’s life is the foremost step to structure the personality. Not to forget, the oral and anal stages are focal fundamental to character traits in a person’s behavior. The inner ‘instincts’ of sexuality and aggression meeting with the socially acceptable norms creates a conflict zone, wherein it is decided what we are to do and what we would become.