Psychosexual Stages

Psychosexual Stages

1. The way the Ego deals with the ID and Superego depends on how the child goes through the psychosexual stages

   • Can become fixated at a certain stage that influences later behaviour

2. Oral

   • 0-1
   • The mouth, exploring through sucking, eating etc
   • Breast feeding and weaning (Key events)
   • Result: Smoking, chewing pens/nails
     • Oral receptive: Gullible, dependent
     • Oral aggressive: Suspicious and aggressive

3. Anal

   • 1-3
   • Pleasure from withholding or expelling faeces
   • Key event: Toilet training
   • Anal retentive: Obsessive tidiness and neatness, mean
   • Anal expulsive: Disorganised, untidy and excessively generous

4. Phallic

   • 3-5
   • Penis or Clitoris, pleasure from masturbation
   • Boys experience Oedipus complex and girls the Elektra complex, superego develops
   • Result: Men have anxious and guilty thoughts about sex
   • Result: Women have a feeling of envy or inferiority

5. Latent

   • 5- Puberty
   • Sexual desires are repressed
   • Child represses previous psychosexual development, learns new life skills

6. Genital

   • Puberty-Death
   • ID sexual drive reawakens, adult life spent pursuing sex
   • Fixation is normal and suggests a well adjusted adult
   • Genitals: Adult gets pleasure from intercourse and masturbation