Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development

David B. Stevenson '96, Brown University Freud advanced a theory of personality development that centered on the effects of the sexual pleasure drive on the individual psyche. At particular points in the developmental process, he claimed, a single body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation. These erogenous zones are the mouth, the anus, and the genital region. The child's libido centers on behavior affecting the primary erogenous zone of his age; he cannot focus on the primary erogenous zone of the next stage without resolving the developmental conflict of the immediate one. A child at a given stage of development has certain needs and demands, such as the need of the infant to nurse. Frustration occurs when these needs are not met; Overindulgence stems from such an ample meeting of these needs that the child is reluctant to progress beyond the stage. Both frustration and overindulgence lock some amount of the child's libido permanently into the stage in which they occur; both result in a fixation. If a child progresses normally through the stages, resolving each conflict and moving on, then little libido remains invested in each stage of development. But if he fixates at a particular stage, the method of obtaining satisfaction which characterized the stage will dominate and affect his adult personality.

The Oral Stage

The oral stage begins at birth, when the oral cavity is the primary focus of libidal energy. The child, of course, preoccupies himself with nursing, with the pleasure of sucking and accepting things into the mouth. The oral character who is frustrated at this stage, whose mother refused to nurse him on demand or who truncated nursing sessions early, is characterized by pessimism, envy, suspicion and sarcasm. The overindulged oral character, whose nursing urges were always and often excessively satisfied, is optimistic, gullible, and is full of admiration for others around him. The stage culminates in the primary conflict of weaning, which both deprives the child of the sensory pleasures of nursing and of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. The stage lasts approximately one and one-half years.

The Anal Stage

At one and one-half years, the child enters the anal stage. With the advent of toilet training comes the child's obsession with the erogenous zone of the anus and with the retention or expulsion of the feces. This represents a classic conflict between the id, which derives pleasure from expulsion of bodily wastes, and the ego and superego, which represent the practical and societal pressures to control the bodily functions. The child meets the conflict between the parent's demands and the child's desires and physical capabilities in one of two ways: Either he puts up a fight or he simply refuses to go. The child who wants to fight takes pleasure in excreting maliciously, perhaps just before or just after being placed on the toilet. If the parents are too lenient and the child manages to

derive pleasure and success from this expulsion, it will result in the formation of an anal expulsive character. This character is generally messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant. Conversely, a child may opt to retain feces, thereby spiting his parents while enjoying the pleasurable pressure of the built-up feces on his intestine. If this tactic succeeds and the child is overindulged, he will develop into an anal retentive character. This character is neat, precise, orderly, careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, and passive-aggressive. The resolution of the anal stage, proper toilet training, permanently affects the individual propensities to possession and attitudes towards authority. This stage lasts from one and one-half to two years.

The Phallic Stage

The phallic stage is the setting for the greatest, most crucial sexual conflict in Freud's model of development. In this stage, the child's erogenous zone is the genital region. As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one. In the young male, the Oedipus conflict stems from his natural love for his mother, a love which becomes sexual as his libidal energy transfers from the anal region to his genitals. Unfortunately for the boy, his father stands in the way of this love. The boy therefore feels aggression and envy towards this rival, his father, and also feels fear that the father will strike back at him. As the boy has noticed that women, his mother in particular, have no penises, he is struck by a great fear that his father will remove his penis, too. The anxiety is aggravated by the threats and discipline he incurs when caught masturbating by his parents. This castration anxiety outstrips his desire for his mother, so he represses the desire. Moreover, although the boy sees that though he cannot posses his mother, because his father does, he can posses her vicariously by identifying with his father and becoming as much like him as possible: this identification indoctrinates the boy into his appropriate sexual role in life. A lasting trace of the Oedipal conflict is the superego, the voice of the father within the boy. By thus resolving his incestuous conundrum, the boy passes into the latency period, a period of libidal dormancy. On the Electra complex, Freud was more vague. The complex has its roots in the little girl's discovery that she, along with her mother and all other women, lack the penis which her father and other men posses. Her love for her father then becomes both erotic and envious, as she yearns for a penis of her own. She comes to blame her mother for her perceived castration, and is struck by penis envy, the apparent counterpart to the boy's castration anxiety. The resolution of the Electra complex is far less clear-cut than the resolution of the Oedipus complex is in males; Freud stated that the resolution comes much later and is never truly complete. Just as the boy learned his sexual role by identifying with his father, so the girl learns her role by identifying with her mother in an attempt to posses her father vicariously. At the eventual resolution of the conflict, the girl passes into the latency period, though Freud implies that she always remains slightly fixated at the phallic stage.

Fixation at the phallic stage develops a phallic character, who is reckless, resolute, selfassured, and narcissistic--excessively vain and proud. The failure to resolve the conflict can also cause a person to be afraid or incapable of close love; Freud also postulated that fixation could be a root cause of homosexuality.

Latency Period
The resolution of the phallic stage leads to the latency period, which is not a psychosexual stage of development, but a period in which the sexual drive lies dormant. Freud saw latency as a period of unparalleled repression of sexual desires and erogenous impulses. During the latency period, children pour this repressed libidal energy into asexual pursuits such as school, athletics, and same-sex friendships. But soon puberty strikes, and the genitals once again become a central focus of libidal energy.

The Genital Stage

In the genital stage, as the child's energy once again focuses on his genitals, interest turns to heterosexual relationships. The less energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual developments, the greater his capacity will be to develop normal relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, he remains fixated, particularly on the phallic stage, his development will be troubled as he struggles with further repression and defenses.

Introduction to Sigmund Freuds Theory on Dreams

Freud maintained the notion that the dream fundamentally acts as the guardian of sleep. When we go to bed, the curtains are drawn, the lights are turned off and in effect we are attempting to disconnect from our reality by extinguishing all external stimuli. During the night, the mind protects the sleeper from being disturbed by reacting to further external stimuli (noise, temperature, light, the need to urinate, numb arm/leg, pain, etc) as well as all internal stimuli (emotions, fears, dissatisfaction, desires, previous days activity) by manufacturing dreams. Freuds work was solely concerned with internal stimuli. Essentially, for a person to continue to sleep undisturbed strong negative emotions, forbidden thoughts and unconscious desires have to be disguised or censored in some form or another. Otherwise, confronted by these, the dreamer would become distressed and they would eventually wake up. Therefore the dream, if understood correctly, could lead to a greater understanding of the dreamers subconscious. Freud believed the dream to be composed of two parts. The manifest and the latent content. The manifest content can be thought of as what a person would remember as soon as they wake what they would consciously describe to someone else when recalling the dream. Freud suggested that the manifest content possessed no meaning whatsoever because it was a disguised representation of the true thought underlying the dream.

On the other hand, the latent content holds the true meaning of the dream the forbidden thoughts and the unconscious desires. These appear in the manifest content but will be disguised and unrecognisable. Although in rare cases the manifest and latent content can be indistinguishable (Freud referred to these as Infantile dreams). The process by which the latent content is transformed into the manifest content is known as the dream work. The dream work can disguise and distort the latent thoughts in the following four ways: 1: Condensation: Two or more latent thoughts are combined to make up one manifest dream image or situation. 2: Displacement: Instead of directing the emotion or desire toward the intended person or object it is transferred onto a meaningless / unrelated object in the manifest dream. 3: Symbolism: Where complex or vague concepts are converted into a dream image. For this, the mind may use the image of a similar sounding (more recognisable) word instead or use a similar looking less intrusive object. According to Freud, dream symbols are for the most part sexual in meaning thus many dreams (but not all) have a sexual correlation. For example, Freud suggested that objects such as tree-trunks, ties, all weapons, sticks, balloons, rockets and other elongated objects were all symbols for the male organ/an erection. Where boxes, cases, chests, cupboards, ovens, suitcases and other hollow objects represented the female genitalia. A room usually signified a woman but so could the whole house, a door or the whole dream landscape. The simple act of walking up a staircase, steps or ladders could also signify a sexual act. Freud also had a fascination with symbols of castration, which he believed were represented in a dream by baldness, teeth falling out and the cutting of hair. In addition, the genitals could also be represented by another part of the body. For example, the male organ could be represented by a hand, the female organ represented by a mouth or an eye. This could therefore explain the reason why the causes of wet dreams are usually never the result of a normal sexual act within a dream. The following is an extract from a dream I had on 16th January 2003: I am walking through a building where I reach two large doors. I push them with all my force and they open onto playing fields. On the grass is an extremely large bookcase full of encyclopaedias. I stand still and watch two women, both of which are bare breasted. They are standing on top of the bookcase attempting to thread a balloon over some telephone wires. One of them calls out to me: Thread the balloon for me while I put some clothes on. I agree although it was more difficult than I envisaged. Therefore when she returns she orders me to start again. Instead of attempting it again I run around a running track, although I become tired extremely quickly. I hear the woman call out: You need to speed it up! I reply: This is the pace I always run at. Which was a

blatant lie. Instead of completing a second lap of the running track, I decide to run in a straight line toward my house. The reason for which appears to be due to the size of the womens breasts, which were overwhelmingly threatening. I am now in my house 4: Secondary Revision: This is the final stage of the dream work. According to Freud, this is where the dream loses the appearance of absurdity and incoherence. In essence, secondary revision can be thought of as the ways in which the dream work covers up the contradiction and attempts to reorganise the dream into a pattern in sync with the dreamers experience of everyday life. Freud used the method of free association to discover the underlying meaning behind the dream (latent content). A patient would describe a dream as accurately as possible (manifest content). The patient would then be told to focus on a specific element of the dream and form as many associations as they could. Essentially, allowing the patient to let their mind wander. This would continue until all manifest content associations (which had previously been unknown to the interpreter) had been discovered. This essentially means that the interpreter is moving in the opposite direction unravelling the dream work until the latent content is revealed. Freud insisted that dreams are a form of fulfilling suppressed wishes. If a wish (likely to be sexual in origin) goes unsatisfied during the dreamers normal day, the mind reacts to this internal stimuli by transforming it into a visual fantasy allowing the dreamer to satisfy his or her desire. The result of which is a peaceful nights sleep. References: Freud, S (1953). The Interpretation of Dreams and On Dreams. In the standard edition of The complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud. J Strachey (ed). Hogarth Press.

Dream Interpretation and Psychoanalysis

By Jean Chiriac In the first pages of his work New Introductory Lectures On Psychoanalysis, dated December 6th 1932, Sigmund Freud clearly asserts that the theory of dreams "occupies a special place in the history of psychoanalysis and marks a turning-point; it was with it that analysis took the step from being a psychotherapeutic procedure to being a depthpsychology" . The theory of dreams is the most characteristic and singular aspect of psychoanalytic science, "something to which there is no counterpart in the rest of our knowledge, a stretch of new country, which has been reclaimed from popular beliefs and mysticism." Dream analysis, in psychoanalysis, provides the possibility to decipher the mystery of neurotic disorders, specifically hysteria, and secondly, it opens the road towards

unconscious. Freud's phrase: "The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious" has become famous. (1) The first great dream interpreted by Freud that leads him to his great discoveries were materialized in 1895. It is the famous dream of Irma's injection, which Freud almost thoroughly analyzed and published in his grandiose work The Interpretation of Dreams (1900). Dream was approached in a manner, which was to become specific for the practitioners of psychoanalysis: by means of the dreamer's associations. Dream analysis (details are provided in the quoted book) reveals Freud's feelings of guilt towards Irma, one of his young patients, whose treatment had not yielded the expected results. Freud defends himself from these negative feelings in his dream, blaming his very patient who, apparently, were not a submissive and compliant patient, or dr. Otto, one of his colleagues, guilty of a careless medical intervention (an injection with an infected syringe). After analyzing his dream, most coherent as it proved, Freud justly declared that dreams "are not meaningless, they are not absurd; they do not imply that one portion of our store of ideas is asleep while another portion is beginning to wake. On the contrary, they are psychical phenomena of complete validity - fulfilments of wishes [our emphasis J.C.]" Dreams therefore require integration into the range of intelligible waking mental acts; "they are constructed by a highly complicated activity of the mind". (op. cit., chapter "A Dream is the Fulfilment of a Wish".) This assertion in fact expresses a great opening towards the activity of abysmal psyche, and mostly the belief in psychic determinism, in the idea that all psychic deeds have their own meaning and connect to day activities, even in a somewhat less visible manner. Contrary to the general opinion of his time's scientific world, Freud thinks dreams are a coherent psychic activity, that can be analyzed in depth. Nevertheless, the comprehensive definition of the dream includes other discoveries too, the true sign of Freudian approach original character: "a dream is a (disguised) fulfilment of a (suppressed or repressed) wish". (op. cit., chapter Distortion in Dreams.) This definition emphasizes two key aspects of the theory of dreams: 1. Dreams are a disguised fulfilment of a wish, and 2. This is repressed wish. We can therefore conclude that disguise is caused by repression. That is the reason why all dream researchers before Freud were not able to discover these facts: they only analyzed the manifest content of the dream, that is its outer shape at wakening time, its faade, not caring about latent thoughts giving rise to its becoming, thoughts we reach by means of the method of associations devised by Freud. Freud goes even further to analyze the nature of distortion by the dream, partially the work of dream-censorship and partly of dream-work, a complex process by means of which latent thoughts are turned into dreams as such. Freud's analysis includes dream-

work, and the end of his book also provides us his opinions concerning the psychology of the dream process: primary and secondary processes, repression, unconscious, etc. That is why The Interpretation of Dreams represents the major work on dreams and unconscious life, not equaled so far! It remains an essential stage in the study of psychoanalysis!In spite of the importance of dream-analysis for the discovery of abysmal psyche functioning as well as for therapy as such, this crucial field of psychoanalysis has no more concerned psychoanalysts after Freud's research. The same work quoted at the beginning of the present article records Freud's own bitter remark: "In the earlier volumes [of Internationale Zeitschrift fr (rztliche) Psychoanalyse (2)] you will find a recurrent sectional heading 'On Dream-Interpretation', containing numerous contributions on various points in the theory of dreams. But the further you go the rarer do these contributions become, and finally the sectional heading disappears completely." In spite of this constant lack of concern for dream theory, lack of regard nowadays materialized in schematic, abstract approach of dream in psychoanalytic therapy, the importance of this area of research is crucial. That is why we have to give it the place it deserves. Notes: 1. "it is the securest foundation of psychoanalysis and the field in which every worker must acquire his convictions and seek his training. If I am asked how one can become a psychoanalyst, I reply: <<By studying one's own dreams>>." (New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis.) 2. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis.

SIGMUND FREUD began his researches into the workings of the human mind
in 1881, after a century during which Europe and America saw the reform of the insane asylum and an ever-increasing interest in "abnormal" psychological states, especially the issue of "nervous diseases" (which was the first phenomenon that Freud studied, examining the nervous system of fish while gaining his medical degree at the University of Vienna from 1873 to 1881). Freud turned to the issue of psychology after reading in 1884 about Breuer's treatment of hysteria by hypnosis and after studying under Charcot at the Sorbonne in 1885. Freud faced opposition and even ridicule for many of his ideas until a group of young doctors began to follow him to Vienna in 1902, leading to the creation of the Viennese Psycho-Analytic Society and, then later in 1910, the formation of the International Psycho-Analytic Association. Although he often distinguished his ideas from medicine and biology, Freud was especially interested in establishing a scientific basis for his theories and, so, he often turned to biological models in order to underline the empirical basis for what were, by necessity, subjective interpretations of apparently illogical and certainly multivalent symbols (for example, in his analysis of dreams). In A Introductory Lectures on PsychoAnalysis (First Lecture), Freud confesses of the difficulties faced by a psychoanalytical critic at the turn of the twentieth century: no empirical evidence; a reliance on the spoken

word, because of the talking cure; the extremely personal (because barbaric) nature of sexual drives, which therefore resist exposure (hence the notion of the unconscious); and civilization's "natural" antipathy to the revelation of the instinctive pleasures that we continually sacrifice for the common good (15.15-24). Despite these caveats, Freud was, indeed, drawn by scientific models for his theories. Although Freud's main concern was with "sexual desire," he understood desire in terms of formative drives, instincts, and appetites that "naturally" determined one's behaviors and beliefs, even as we continually repress those behaviors and beliefs. (As a young student in Vienna, Freud was, in fact, especially fascinated by Charles Darwin's theories of evolution.) Following a biological logic, if you will, Freud therefore established a rigid model for the "normal" sexual development of the human subject, what he terms the "libido development." Here, then, is your story, as told by Freud, with the ages provided as very rough approximations since Freud often changed his mind about the actual dates of the various stages and also acknowledged that development varied between individuals. Stages can even overlap or be experienced simultaneously.

0-2 years of age. Early in your development, all of your desires were oriented
towards your lips and your mouth, which accepted food, milk, and anything else you could get your hands on (the oral phase). The first object of this stage was, of course, the mother's breast, which could be transferred to auto-erotic objects (thumb-sucking). The mother thus logically became your first "love-object," already a displacement from the earlier object of desire (the breast). When you first recognized the fact of your father, you dealt with him by identifying yourself with him; however, as the sexual wishes directed to your mother grew in intensity, you became possessive of your mother and secretly wished your father out of the picture (the Oedipus complex). This Oedipus complex plays out throughout the next two phases of development.

2-4 years of age. Following the oral phase, you entered the sadistic-anal phase,
which is split between active and passive impulses: the impulse to mastery on the one hand, which can easily become cruelty; the impulse to scopophilia (love of gazing), on the other hand. This phase was roughly coterminous with a new auto-erotic object: the rectal orifice (hence, the term "sadistic-anal phase"). According to Freud, the child's pleasure in defecation is connected to his or her pleasure in creating something of his or her own, a pleasure that for women is later transferred to child-bearing.

4-7 years of age. Finally, you entered the phallic phase, when the penis (or the
clitoris, which, according to Freud, stands for the penis in the young girl) become your primary object-cathexis. In this stage, the child becomes fascinated with urination, which is experienced as pleasurable, both in its expulsion and retention. The trauma connected with this phase is that of castration, which makes this phase especially important for the resolution of the Oedipus complex. Over this time, you began to deal with your separation anxieties (and your all-encompassing egoism) by finding symbolic ways of representing and thus controlling the separation from (not to mention your desire for) your mother. You also learned to defer bodily gratification when necessary. In other

words, your ego became trained to follow the reality-principle and to control the pleasure-principle, although this ability would not be fully attained until you passed through the latency period. In resolving the Oedipus complex, you also began to identify either with your mother or your father, thus determining the future path of your sexual orientation. That identification took the form of an "ego-ideal," which then aided the formation of your "super-ego": an internalization of the parental function (which Freud usually associated with the father) that eventually manifested itself in your conscience (and sense of guilt).

7-12 years of age. Next followed a long "latency period" during which your
sexual development was more or less suspended and you concentrated on repressing and sublimating your earlier desires and thus learned to follow the reality-principle. During this phase, you gradually freed yourself from your parents (moving away from the mother and reconciling yourself with your father) or by asserting your independence (if you responded to your incestuous desires by becoming overly subservient to your father). You also moved beyond your childhood egoism and sacrificed something of your own ego to others, thus learning how to love others.

13 years of age onward (or from puberty on). Your development over the
latency period allowed you to enter the final genital phase. At this point, you learned to desire members of the opposite sex and to fulfill your instinct to procreate and thus ensure the survival of the human species. To explain the early psycho-drama of your childhood, Freud turned to a dramatic work, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus (who, according to a prophecy, is fated to sleep with his mother and kill his father) attempts to escape his fate but, in the process, unwittingly does the very things he was attempting to avoid. Freud therefore coined the term, the Oedipus complex. One should note that anyone can get arrested at or insufficiently grow out of any of the primal stages, leading to various symptoms in one's adult life. (See fixation and regression.) One thing "you" have surely noticed is the decidedly masculine bent of Freud's story of sexual development. Indeed, Freud often had difficulty incorporating female desire into his theories, leading to his famous, unanswered question: "what does a woman want?" As Freud states late in life, "psychology too is unable to solve the riddle of femininity" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.116). It is for this reason that many feminists have criticized Freud's ideas and one reason why many feminists interested in psychoanalysis have turned instead to Kristeva. (See also Gender and Sex.) To explain women, Freud argued that young girls followed more or less the same psychosexual development as boys. Indeed, he argues paradoxically that "the little girl is a little man" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.118) and that the entrance into the phallic phase occurs for the young girl through her "penis-equivalent," the clitoris. In fact, according to Freud, the young girl, also experiences the castration-complex, with the difference that her tendency is to be a victim of what Freud terms "penis-envy," a desire for a penis as large as a man's. After this stage, according to Freud, the woman has an extra stage of

development when "the clitoris should wholly or in part hand over its sensitivity, and at the same time its importance, to the vagina" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.118). According to Freud, the young girl must also at some point give up her first object-choice (the mother and her breast) in order to take the father as her new proper object-choice. Her eventual move into heterosexual femininity, which culminates in giving birth, grows out of her earlier infantile desires, with her own child now taking "the place of the penis in accordance with an ancient symbolic equivalence" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.128).