Freudian psychosexual stages
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In Freudian psychology, each child passes through five psychosexual stages. During each stage, the id focuses on a distinct erogenous zone on the body. According to Freud, suffering from trauma during any of the first three stages may result in fixation. Freud related the resolutions of the stages with adult personalities and personality disorders.
A summary of Freud's five psychosexual stages is as follows:
| Stage | Age Range | Erogenous zone(s) | Consequences of Fixation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oral | 0-18 months | Mouth | Oral fixation:
Passive dependence or excessive smoking/eating |
| Anal | 18-36 months | Bowel and bladder elimination | Anal-retentiveness:
Obsession with organization or excessive neatness |
| Phallic | 3-6 years | Genitals | Oedipus complex (in boys only according to Freud)
Electra complex (in girls according to Freud, termed by Jung) |
| Latency | 6 years-puberty | Dormant sexual feelings | (People do not tend to fixate at this stage.) |
| Genital | Puberty and beyond | Sexual interests mature | N/A |
Despite their popularity among psychoanalytical psychologists, Freud's psychosexual theories are commonly criticized for their sexism. For example, Freud stated that young females develop "penis envy" toward the males during their psychosexual development. In response, Karen Horney, a German Freudian psychoanalytic, argued that young females develop "power envy" instead of "penis envy" toward the male.
The popularity of Freud's stages of psychosexual development are still widely seen today in the American society. Commonly people refer to others with obsessive compulsive disorder as anal.
[edit] See also
| This page uses content from the English-language version of Wikipedia. The original article was at Freudian psychosexual stages. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Psychology Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the GNU Free Documentation License. |
