Psycho-sexual Dev Flashcards
Psychosexual dev theory
- roots of our personality is tied to the first 7 years of life
- child is a sexual being and their sexuality is closely tied to dev
Sexuality
- Sexual pleasure - bodily pleasure, gratification of the sense of touch
- kids experience sexuality but go through stages before reaching the genital stage
- we would have mostly repressed these sexual experiences from when we were young
The stages
1 oral 2 anal 3 phallic 4 latency 5 genital
Each stage is focused of a different part of the body that gives pleasure
- how we develop through each stage is developmental
- trauma or excessive gratification at a stage might get us stuck in that stage
- normal dev required to reach genital stage
- 2 consequences - regression and fixation
As we proceed through stages we tie up energy to that stage. If we tie up too much energy to one stage we might not have enough energy left to develop a mature adult sexuality.
The oral stage
- up to 18 months
- pleasure zones - mouth, lips, tongue, gums, teeth
- sexual pleasure gained from eating and putting things in mouth
- lack of balance - fixation (oral fixation) or over-investment
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- 2 modalities of the oral stage - incorporative & aggressive
- incorporative - putting things in mouth, swallowing.
Traits - optimistic, passive character. - aggressive - biting, chewing.
Traits - sarcasm, argumentative, manipulative.
Regressions - biting, sucking, smoking, oral sex (especially when tense)
Anal stage
- 18 months - 3 years
- divided into 2 - the early anal and the late anal stages
- early anal - kids receive pleasure by destroying and losing objects. Destructive nature of the sadistic drive is stronger than the erotic drive with kids behaving aggressively towards their parents due to frustration from toilet training.
- late anal - friendly interest towards their faeces.
Positive toilet training that is praised by parents - generous and magnanimous adults
Kids who are not praised will withhold the need to defact until it becomes painful and erotically stimulating.
Retaining - holding it in. Expelling - venting faeces at inappropriate times.
Expulsive - disorderliness, destructive, cruel, mess, too generous.
Retentive - stingy, miserly, scrooge, constricted, stubborn, meticulous, precise.
The phallic stage
- 3-5 years
- pleasure zone - penis, clitoris. With the nappy being removed, genitals are accessible and touching becomes possible and satisfying.
- kids are unaware that touching is unacceptable
- enjoys being touched by others ex: parents
- start of heterosexual pleasure vs narcissistic (auto erotic pleasure)
- parents attitudes affects kids
- punishments, moral judgements etc - castration anxiety (cutting off penis)
- self pleasure fixations - vanity, promiscuity, flirting
- inhibition leads to - self hatred, timidity, isolation, avoidance of heterosexuality, sexual inhibition.
Oedipus complex
- only boys
- occurs in the phallic stage
- boy falls in love with mother, wants her for himself and sees father as rival
- devs castration complex - fears that the father’s anger will deprive him of his penis which gives boy pleasure
- castration complex pushes boy out of this complex making him lose erotic feelings for his mum.
3 imp devs of complex -
- dev of gender role awareness, identification and introjection of same sex parent
- dev of non sexual love for opposite sex parent
- full dev of superego - boy’s superego includes father’s ideals and prohibitions.
Electra complex
- starts similar to oedipus with girls wanting to possess mother sexually at first. Girls discover that boys have penises and blames mother for not having one until they find out that the mother does not have a penis either. The girl then starts sexually attracting herself to the dad and develops penis envy
- for boys castration fear resolves the oedipus complex whilst the girl castration starts the complex
- girls don’t experience castration anxiety so complex cannot be resolved.
Therefore, women have weaker dev superegos. They dev a special relationship with father but keep sexual identity with mother.
Latency stage
- 4/5 to puberty
- not focused on body part
- main emphasis on school learning and gender roles
- repression of most sexual urges
- social contact with kids of same sex mostly
- homosexual phase, but not true homosexuality.
- sublimation of urges and dev of concern for others
Genital stage
- occurs with puberty
- full dev to receive and give sexual pleasure
- normal functioning in no previous fixation.
- be socially adjusted and gain sexual pleasure without upsetting values and rules of society and self
- the orally fixated - dependency needs
- anally fixated - aggression problems, over control and under control.
- phallically fixated - mutual sex and sexual behaviour.
Freud on homosexuality
- humans are basically bisexual
- heterosexuality and homosexuality dev from bisexuality
