Article Category: Relationships and Sex
Added on: 09/25/07 07:30
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Freud believed that early experiences play a critical role in determining what a person’s adult personality is like. To understand the difficulties of adulthood, one must know the difficulties of childhood. Freud thought that personality is largely determined by age five. During later life personality stabilizes further and its expression becomes more symbolic and less literal.
Freud viewed personality development as movement through a series of stages. Each stage reflects a body area through which libido, or sexual energy, is discharged during that period. For this reason they are called psychosexual stages. The view is that the child confronts conflicts at three stages. If the conflict isn’t well resolved, too much libido gets permanently invested in that stage, a process termed fixation. This means less energy is then available to handle conflicts in later stages. As a result, it is harder to successfully resolve the conflicts in the later stages. In this sense, each stage builds on the previous ones.
Fixation can occur for two reasons. A person who is overindulged in a stage may be reluctant to leave it and move on. Or, a person whose needs are deeply frustrated can’t move on until the needs are met. In either case, personality becomes partly stuck at this stage, as a portion of libido becomes invested in that cathexis. The stronger the fixation, the greater the amount of libido invested in it. In a very strong fixation one is so unconsciously preoccupied that one has little energy left for anything else.
The Oral Stage
Extends from birth to roughly eighteen months. During this time much of the infant’s interaction with the world occurs through the mouth and lips, and gratification focuses in that area. The mouth is the source of tension reduction (eating) and pleasurable sensations (tasting, sucking, licking). At the same time, infants are completely dependent on others for their security and survival. The basic conflict of this stage concerns its ending; the process of weaning – literal and figurative. Children become under increasing pressure to let go of their mother and become less reliant on her. The oral stage has two substages. During the first phase, which lasts roughly six months, the baby is totally helpless and dependent, and limited to taking things in. Freud thought that the traits that develop during this incorporative phase include general sense of optimism versus pessimism, trust versus mistrust, dependency on others and gullibility.
The second stage begins with teething. Sexual pleasure comes from biting and chewing, and even inflicting pain, thus this stage is called the sadistic phase. During this time the infant is weaned from the bottle or breast and begins to bite and chew food. Traits arising from this stage can be traced to this new ability. This phase is thought to determine who is verbally aggressive later in life and who tends to use “biting” sarcasm in conversation.
In general terms, oral characters should relate to the world orally. They should be more preoccupied than others with food and drink. When stressed, they should be more likely than others to reduce tension through activities involving the mouth, such as smoking, drinking or nail biting. When angry, they should engage in verbal aggression. Oral characters should be concerned with receiving support from others, and should ease interactions with people rather than alienate them. Also, people who display oral imagery seem to be highly motivated to gain closeness and support from others and are more sensitive to how others react to them. They have a higher physiological reactivity to social isolation and to subtle cues of rejection. They also use more physical contact during social interactions and are more self-disclosing than others.
However, it is worthy pointing out that you don’t have to be an extremely oral character to seek oral gratification. Lots of people chew gum. Nor is the expression of sexual energy through oral contact limited to early childhood. After all, what is serious kissing but an oral expression of sexuality? Nor is that the only way sexuality is expressed among adults. In sum, it remains true that the mouth is an important part of the body through which the human sexual nature is expressed and pleasure obtained.
The Anal Stage
Begins at about eighteen months and continues into the third year of life. During this period the anus is the focal erogenous zone, and sexual pleasure comes from the stimulation that occurs when defecating. The major event of this period is the start of toilet training. For many children, toilet training is the first time that external constraints are systematically imposed on satisfaction of internal urges. When toilet training starts, children can’t relieve themselves whenever and wherever they want, but must learn that there’s an appropriate time and place for everything.
The personality characteristics said to arise from fixations during this period depend on how toilet training is approached by parents and caretakers. Two orientations are typical. One involves urging the child to eliminate at a desired time and place and praising the child lavishly for success. This approach places a lot of attention on the elimination process and reward for the child. The child is therefore convinced by the value of producing “things” at the “right” time and place by whatever means possible. To Freud, this experience provides a basis for adult productivity and creativity.
The second approach to toilet training is harsher. Rather than praise for a job well done, emphasis is on punishment, ridicule and shame for failures. These practices yield two patterns of characteristics, depending on how the child reacts. If the child adopts an active pattern of rebellion, eliminating forcefully when the parents least want it, a set of anal expulsive traits develop. These are tendencies to be messy, cruel, destructive and overly hostile.
If the child attempts to get even by withholding feces and urine, a set of anal retentive traits develops. This personality has a rigid, obsessive style of interacting with the world. The characteristics that make up this pattern are stinginess, obstinacy and orderliness or cleanliness. Stinginess stems from the desire to retain feces. Obstinacy stems from the struggle of wills over toilet training. Orderliness is a reaction against the messiness of defecating
The Phallic Stage
Begins during the third year and continues through the fifth year of life. The focus of libidinal excitation shifts to the genital organs. This is also the period when most children begin to masturbate, as they become aware of the sensory pleasure that arises from genital manipulation.
At first the awakening sexual desires are completely autoerotic in nature. That is, sexual pleasure is totally derived from, and satisfied by self-simulation. Gradually, however, libido begins to shift toward the opposite-sex parent, as boys develop an interest in their mothers and girls in their fathers. Simultaneously, the child becomes hostile toward the same-sex parent because of perceived competition between them over the affection of the other parent. These possessive forces are similar in many ways, but are manifested differently in boys and girls. With this shift, the development pattern for boys and girls diverges.
For a boy, two changes occur. His initial love for his mother transforms into a strong sexual desire. His feelings for his father shift toward hostility and hatred, because his father is a rival for his mother’s affection. These feelings, however, may induce feelings of guilt. At the same time, the boy is threatened by fear that his father will retaliate against him for his desire toward his mother. In traditional psychoanalytic theory, the boy’s fear is that his father will castrate him to eliminate the source of his lust.
Ultimately, this castration anxiety causes the boy to push his sexual desire for his mother into the unconscious. Castration anxiety also causes the boy to identify with his father, that is, develop feelings of similarity and connectedness with him. This serves several functions. First, it gives the boy a kind of “protective coloration”. Being like his father makes it seem less likely that his father will harm him. Secondly, by identifying with desirable aspects of the father, the boy reduces his ambivalence toward him. The process of identification thus paves the way for the development of the superego. Finally, by identifying with his father, the boy gains vicarious outlet for his sexual urges toward his mother. That is, he gains symbolic access to his mother through his father. Presumably, the more he resembles his father, the more easily the boy can unconsciously fantasize himself in his father’s place.
For girls the conflict of the phallic stage is more complicated. Girls abandon their love for their mother for a new one for their father. This shift occurs when a girl realizes she has no penis. She withdraws her love for her mother because she blames her for her castrated condition (after discovering that her mother has no penis either). Simultaneously, her affection is drawn toward her father who does have a penis. Ultimately the girl comes to wish that her father would share his penis with her through sexual union or that he would provide her with the symbolic equivalent of a penis – a baby.
Freud referred to these feelings as penis envy, which are the female counterpart of castration anxiety in boys. As for boys, the conflict is resolved through identification. By becoming like her mother, the girl gains vicarious access to her father. She also increases the chances that she’ll marry someone just like him.
Fixations that develop during the phallic stage result in personalities that, in effect, continue to wrestle with these conflicts. Men may go to great lengths to demonstrate that they haven’t been castrated seducing as many women as they can, or fathering many children. The attempt to assert their masculinity may also be expressed symbolically by attaining great success in their career. Alternatively, they may fail in their sexual and occupational lives (purposely, but unconsciously so) because of the guilt they feel over competing with their father for their mother’s love.
Among women, the continuation of the conflict results in a way of relating to men that is excessively seductive and flirtatious, but with a denial of the underlying sexuality. This style of relating first develops toward the woman’s father. She was drawn to him first, but by this point has repressed the sexual desire that first drew her. The pattern is then carried over to her later social interactions. This is a woman who excites men with her seductive behaviours and is then surprised when men want sexual contact with her.
Freud felt that identifying these emotional conflicts was one of his most significant theoretical contributions. This brief spam involves significant emotional turmoil filled with love, hate, guilt, jealousy and fear. How children negotiate the conflicts of the phallic stage determines their fundamental attitudes to sexuality, interpersonal competitiveness, and personal adequacy.
Fixations that develop during these first three stages of development presumably form much of the basis of adult personality.
The Latency Period
From about the age six to early teens, this is a period when aggressive and sexual drives become less active. The lessening of these urges results partly from changes in the body and partly form the emergence of ego and superego aspects of personality. During this stage children turn their attention to other pursuits, often intellectual or social in nature. Thus the latency period is a time when the child’s experiences broaden rather than a time when new conflicts are confronted and new traits emerge.
With the onset of puberty, toward the end of this period, libidinal and aggressive urges again intensify. In addition, conflicts of previous periods may be reencountered. This is a time when the coping skills of the ego are severely taxed. Although adolescents have adult sexual desires, the release of sexual energy through intercourse isn’t socially sanctioned. As a result, sexual gratification is sought in other ways – for instance, through masturbation.
The Genital Stage
In later adolescence and adulthood a person moves into the final stage of psychosexual development. If earlier stages have been negotiated well, the person enters this stage with libido still organized around the genitals, and it remains focused there throughout life. The sexual gratification differs, however, from that of the earlier stages. Specifically, earlier attachments were narcissistic; the child was interested only in his or hr own sexual pleasure. Others were of interest only insofar as they furthered the child’s own pleasure. In the genital stage, a desire develops to share sexual gratification with someone else. Thus the person becomes capable of loving others not only for selfish reasons, but also for altruistic ones.
Ideally, the person is able to achieve full and free orgasm on an equal basis. Indeed, this ability to share with others in a warm and caring way, and to be concerned with their welfare, is a hallmark of the genital stage. Persons in this stage also have more control of impulses, both sexual and aggressive, and are able to release them in smaller amounts (but more frequently) in sublimated, socially acceptable ways. In this manner, the person becomes transformed from a self-concerned, pleasure-seeking infant into a well-socialized, caring adult.
Freud believed that the genital stage isn’t entered automatically and that this transition is rarely achieved in its entirety. Most people have less control over their impulses than they should, and most have difficulty in gratifying sexual desires in a completely satisfying and acceptable way. In this sense the genital personality is an ideal to strive for, rather than an end point to be taken for granted. It is the perfect culmination of psychosexual development from the analytic point of view.
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