Sigmund Freud's Psychoosexual Development Case Study

Introduction

This is the first assignment work done in the module ‘Adolescence and learning’. In this assignment I have focused on Freud's psychosexual theory of development and how does the psychosexual theory of development suggest, how parents must manage their children’s sexual drives during the first few crucial years of development. According to Sigmund Freud, personality develops through a series of stages in which the energies of the id are focused on certain erogenous areas. This psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behavior. His theory says there are main 5 stages of psychosexual development. They are:

Outline of Freud's psychosexual theory of development

Oral stage, birth

Latent stage

According to Sigmund Freud, the fourth stage of psychosexual development is the latency stage that spans from the age of six years until puberty, wherein the child consolidates the character habits he or she developed in the three, earlier stages of psychologic and sexual development.

Whether or not the child has successfully resolved the oedipal conflict, the instinctual drives of the id are inaccessible to the Ego, because his or her defense mechanisms repressed them during the phallic stage. Hence, because said drives are latent (hidden) and gratification is delayed — unlike during the preceding oral, anal, and phallic stages — the child must derive the pleasure of gratification from secondary process-thinking that directs the libidinal drives towards external activities, such as schooling, friendships, hobbies, etc. Any neuroses established during the fourth, latent stage, of psychosexual development might derive from the inadequate resolution either of the Oedipus conflict or of the Ego's failure to direct his or her energies towards socially acceptable activities. (Brahm, 2003)

Genital