Sigmund Freud's Theory is quite complex and although his writings on psychosexual development set the groundwork for how our personalities developed, it was only one of five parts to his overall theory of personality. He also believed that different driving forces develop during these stages which play an important role in how we interact with the world.
- Oral Stage 0-2
- Anal Stage 2-5
- Phallic Stage 5-7
- Oedipus/Electra Complex
- Latency Period 7- Puberty
- Genital Period Puberty
Oral Stage
The oral stage begins at birth, when the oral cavity is the primary focus of pleasure. The child test things by keeping them into mouth and of course, preoccupies himself with nursing, with the pleasure of sucking. The oral character who is frustrated at this stage,whose mother refused to nurse him on demand or who nursing sessions were reduced earlier, 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.
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 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:
1. 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. This character is generally messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant.
2. Conversely, on other extreme the character that encountered parent’s excessive strictness and is overindulged, 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. Fixation at this stage is said to result in orderliness, meanness, stubbornness, compulsiveness, etc.
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 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/ kill the same sexed one
Oedipus complex
Freud got the idea from a play about Greek mythology, in those days this play got immense fame in England Freud also went to watch that play. The main character of the tragedy is Oedipus also known as Oedipus Rex, son of King Laius of Thebes and Queen Jocasta. As a baby, Oedipus was sent to die or be killed because the royal fortune teller made the prediction that Oedipus would kill his father and would marry his mother. But instead the baby was given to a shepherd and raised in the court of King. On the way in jungle while on a hunting quest, Oedipus saw something moving beside the bush, he thought it was a dear and threw his arrow toward that bush and unknowingly killed his real father and fulfilled the first half of the oracle's prophecy.
Then he went to save the Thebans from a monster. Thebans had declared that who would kill the monster would marry the queen. So Oedipus killed that monster and unknowingly married his mother and fathered a girl. But when he came to know that he is the father of his own step sister and married his mother, he blinded himself with the brooches of her mother’s dress and remorse bitterly. Freud took this story very seriously and concluded that the fame of the play reflects a real dilemma.
Then Freud gave the idea of Oedipus complex since the mother is the very first love of every child when the boy becomes aware that his rival is his own father, who is so loving and caring and he wants to kill him. A very strange idea emerges, now this idea is strange to the child as well so child pushes the idea into unconscious and revulsion for father and guilty feelings for this hatred at the same time are pushed into unconscious, when the unconscious desires come to the conscious level some thing really interesting happens and unconscious wishes transforms in to totally opposite behavior of identifying with the father so child can get the appreciation and attention of the mother.
Electra complex
Electra complex is the girl’s unconscious desire to possess the father and kill the mother. So a girl tries to identify with mother to impress the father.
