Sigmund Freud and Psychosexual Theory
Sigmund Freud and psychosexual theory go hand in hand. To split the inventor from the concept would be unthinkable.
In order to understand Sigmund Freud and psychosexual theory, we must first look at Freud himself. The great “father of psychology” was somewhat obsessed with the ways in which human beings are sexual (yet functional) creatures. In many ways, the various stages included in his sexuality concept may seem offensive to some, yet they are also strikingly accurate.
The theory mentioned above is split into five stages that include: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital. Interestingly, though these stages include a person’s development until they reach puberty, Freud was not all that interested in studying adult behaviour. Regardless, let’s begin with the oral stage. The oral stage begins from the time a child is born to the time a child is two years old. According to his theory, during this time a child is obsessed with sucking, biting, and swallowing. Children of this age are also battling the weaning away from a mother’s breast.
The second stage, anal, is slightly different from oral. Once a child reaches the two year mark, they are instantly obsessed with anything to do with the anus. One of the hardest things during this time is the child’s inability to learn to use the toilet properly. The anal stage continues until a child is four years old. From age four to five, a child will be dealing with the phallic stage -- Sigmund Freud and psychosexual theory really start to develop at this point.
Freud spent a lot of time on the phallic stage and its meanings. To him, children between the ages of four to five were directly infatuated with the genitals. From this, he developed the Oedipus complex pertaining to boys, and the Electra complex pertaining to girls (essentially, every child at this stage is in love with their mother or father accordingly). Following the phallic stage, children from the age of six until the age of puberty were thought to be somewhat consumed by sexual desires too, though they do not reach the full sexual peak until they have reached puberty (genital stage).
If you were to observe a child with Sigmund Freud and psychosexual theory in mind, you may begin to see that some of his observations were not so far off base. Of course, you may also realize that different children tend to react to life in different ways. Essentially, choosing to follow Freud’s stages (or not) is entirely up to you, though his intriguing thoughts are hard to ignore altogether.