Psychosexual development

The concenpt of psychosexual development started with Sigmund Frued, when he developed his theories of psychoanalysis in the late 19th century and the 20th century. In the development of his theories, Freud's main concern was with sexual desire, defined in terms of formative drives, instincts, and appetites that naturally determined one's behaviours and beliefs, even as we continually repress those behaviours and beliefs.

Following a biological logic, Freud established a rigid model for that "normal" sexual development of the human being, or the "libido development":-

From birth to two years of age all of a person's desires were oriented towards his lips and his mouth, which accepted food, milk, and anything else he can get his hands on. This is called the oral phase of his development. The first object of this stage is his mother's breast, which could be transferred to autoerotic subjects, such as thumb sucking. The mother became the child's first love-object and is already a displacement from the earlier object of desire, the breast. The Oedipus complex can manifest at this stage of development because the child recognises the father and identifies himself with him. As the sexual wishes directed to the mother grew in intensity, the child became more possessive of his mother and secretly wished his father out of the picture.

From two to four years of age the child enters into 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 gazine), on the other hand. This phase was roughly coterminous with a new auto-erotic object: the rectal orifice. The child's pleasure in defacation is connected to his pleasure in creating something of his own, and pleasure that for women is transferred to child bearing.

From four to seven years of age, the child enters the phallic phase, when the sexual organs become the child's 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, the child began to deal with separation anxiety by finding symbolic ways of representing and this controlling the separation from his mother. The child also learned to defer bodily gratification when necessary. The ego became trained to follow the reality-principle and to control the pleasure-principle, although this ability would not be fully attained until the child passed the latency period of his development. In resolving the Oedipus complex, the child began to identify either with his mother or father, thus determining the future path of his sexual orientation. That identifiation took on the form of an "ego-ideal", which then aided the formation of his "super-ego": an internalization of the parental function that eventually manifested itself in the child's sense of conscience.

From seven to twelve years of age the child undergoes a latency period, during which his sexual development ws more or less arrested and he concentrated on repressing and sublimating his earlier desires and thus learned to follow the reality-principle. During this phase, the child gradually freed himself from his parents by asserting his independence. The child moved beyond his childhood egoism and sacrificed something of his own ego to others, those learning how to love others.

From thirteen onwards, the child is allowed to enter the genital phase. At this point he learns to desire members of the opposite sex and to fulfill his instinct to procreate and thus ensure the survival of the human race.

It is important to note that anyone can get arrested at or insufficiently grow out of any of the primal stages, leading to various symptoms in ones adult life.