Freud Psycho-Sexual Stages of Personality Development

Freud theorized that from birth to adolescence children go through five stages of development called the psycho- sexual stages. He considered these stages crucial in the development of a healthy personality. The child’s experiences during these stages form a foundation for the development of many personality traits that continue into adulthood. Freud psycho- sexual stages include the oral stage, anal, phallic, latency and the genetical stage.

The oral stage (0-1 year)

The child’s first concern is to obtain food and this initial period is called the oral stage. If food is really available the child develops trust and an optimistic outlook. If the child oral needs are not met, feelings of uncertainty and pessimism are likely to be the outcome and they persist throughout the adult personality. It is the stage I which id gratification is focused on the mouth. If the infants’ oral needs are over satisfied, he/she may be fixated and becomes an oral receptive personality characterized by excessive eating, smoking and chewing. If the infant’s oral pleasures are frustrated, he/she may grow up a fixated oral aggressive personality; i.e. being verbally hostile.

The anal stage (1-3 yrs)

This occurs when parents are handling toilet training of their children. Pleasures at this stage are focused around the anus. Freud believed that the first part of the stage (1-2 yrs) is characterized by pleasures from expulsion of faeces but that may cause their parents to punish them. If they delay gratification until they are on the toilet, children can gain approval of their parents and this second part is characterized by pleasure in retention. Fixation in the first subset results in adult personality characterized by messiness, disorderly and fixation in the later subset results in excessive compulsiveness e.g. excessive neatness, cleanness over conformity and exaggerated self control i.e. anal retentive personality.

Phallic stage (3-6 yrs)

During this stage genital becomes the primary source of pleasure. Freud believed that a shift to genital pleasure bring about the intense unconscious conflict that Freud called it the OEDIPUS COMLEX in boys and ELECTRACOMPLEX in girls. The young boy has sexual feelings for his mother and is jealousy of the father. He experiences castration anxiety because he is afraid his father may castrate him. To solve this conflict, the boy identifies with the father and suppresses his sexual feelings towards the mother. The young girl in the phallic stage through the Electra complex in which she feels inferior to boys because she lacks a penis. She blames her mother for her condition and loves her father. The penis envy eventually is resolved by suppressing her feelings towards the father and identifying with the mother. According to Freud, if the Electra and Oedipus complex were not resolved, the person would have difficulty in relating to members of the opposite sex, have egocentric selfishness, homosexually, prostitution and gender identity problems may result. Latency stage (6-11 yrs) This stage is characterized by apparent absence of sexual desires that has been strongly repressed during the resolution of the Oedipus and Electra- complex. Instead the energy is submitted and converted into interest in doing school work and participating in games. To pass successfully in this stage, the child must develop a certain degree of competence.

The genital stage (11 yrs onwards)

At puberty, the child’s heterosexual interests appear. The person begins to focus on others instead of self, seeking to combine self concerns with other people especially the opposite sex. Freud’s theory was however criticized because of his pessimistic view of human kind and string emphasis on sexuality.

JUNG’S ANALYTICAL THEORY OF PERSONALITY

Carl Jung called his theory analytical psychology. This is because he thought that to an individual, personal unconscious consist of repressed thought and memories, there was also a collective an-conscious shared by all human kind. Stored in the collective unconscious are universal human experiences repeated over centuries. The collective unconscious shapes our experience. Jung called these unconscious universal ideas arch types. The psyche type includes all thoughts and feelings conscious and unconscious of an individual. According to Jung the ego is the conscious mind, the part of the mind that is concerned with thinking, emotions, memory and perception. Jung urged that libido energy can be directed externally to become extraversion or it can be directed inward which will become introversion. Introverted person tends to be shy and withdrawn where as the extravert is sociable and outgoing. For each person one of these attitudes becomes dominant and controls the ego and the other non dominant becomes included in the personal unconsciousness.

Determinants of Personality

1. Heredity: this refers to those factors that were determined at conception. Physical structure, facial attractiveness, gender, temperament, muscle composition and reflexes, energy level, and biological rhythms are characteristics that are generally considered to be either completely or substantially influenced by who your parents were, that is by their biological, physiological and inherent psychological makeup.

2. Environment: the environmental factors that exert pressures on our personality formation are the culture in which we are raised, our early conditioning, the norms among our family, friends and social groups, and other influences that we experience. The environment to which we are exposed plays a substantial role in shaping our personalities.

3. Situation: this influences the effects of heredity and environment on personality. An individual’s personality although generally stable and consistent, does change in different situations. The varying demand of different situation calls forth different aspects of one’s personality.

Other related theories, READ MORE ABOUT PERSONALIY

1. Alfred Adler’s individual psychology

2. Honey’s cultural psychology

3. Trait theories

4. Humanistic theories

5. Social learning theories