PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
In Freudian psychology,
psychosexual development is a central element of the psychoanalytic sexual
drive theory, that human beings, from birth, possess an instinctual libido
(sexual energy) that develops in five stages. Each stage – the oral, the anal,
the phallic, the latent, and the genital – is characterized by the erogenous
zone that is the source of the libidinal drive. Sigmund Freud proposed that if
the child experienced sexual frustration in relation to any psychosexual developmental
stage, he or she would experience anxiety that would persist into adulthood as
a neurosis, a functional mental disorder.
Contents
•1 Background
•2 Freudian psychosexual development ◦2.1 Oral stage
◦2.2 Anal stage
◦2.3 Phallic stage
◦2.4 Latency stage
◦2.5 Genital stage
•3 Criticisms ◦3.1 Scientific
◦3.2 Feminist
◦3.3 Anthropologic
•4 Medical sexological model
•5 See also
•6 References
Background
The neurologist Sigmund Freud, c. 1921.
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
observed that during the predictable stages of early childhood development, the
child's behavior is oriented towards certain parts of his or her body, e.g. the
mouth during breast-feeding, the anus during toilet-training. He argued that
adult neurosis (functional mental disorder) often is rooted in childhood
sexuality, and consequently suggested that neurotic adult behaviors are
manifestations of childhood sexual fantasy and desire. That is because human
beings are born "polymorphously perverse", infants can derive sexual
pleasure from any part of their bodies, and that socialization directs the
instinctual libidinal drives into adult heterosexuality.[3] Given the
predictable timeline of childhood behavior, he proposed "libido
development" as a model of normal childhood sexual development, wherein
the child progresses through five psychosexual stages – the oral; the anal; the
phallic; the latent; and the genital – in which the source pleasure is in a
different erogenous zone.
