Hockenbury Discovering Psychology 5th txtbk

426 CHAPTER 10 Personality©1995 The New Yorker Collectionfrom Cartoonbank.com. Tom Cheney.“He has a few things to workthrough, but we’re good together.”psychosexual stages. The latency stage occurs during late childhood, and the fifthand final stage, the genital stage, begins in adolescence.Each psychosexual stage represents a different focus of the id’s sexual energies.Freud (1940) contended that “sexual life does not begin only at puberty, but startswith clear manifestations after birth.” This statement is often misinterpreted. Freudwas not saying that an infant experiences sexual urges in the same way that an adultdoes. Instead, Freud believed that the infant or young child expresses primitivesexual urges by seeking sensual pleasure from different areas of the body. Thus,the psychosexual stages are age-related developmental periods in which sexualimpulses are focused on different bodily zones and are expressed through the activitiesassociated with these areas.Over the first five years of life, the expression of primitive sexual urges progressesfrom one bodily zone to another in a distinct order: the mouth, the anus, and thegenitals. The first year of life is characterized as the oral stage. During this time theinfant derives pleasure through the oral activities of sucking, chewing, and biting.During the next two years, pleasure is derived through elimination and acquiringcontrol over elimination—the anal stage. In the phallic stage, pleasure seeking isfocused on the genitals.FixationUnresolved Developmental ConflictsAt each psychosexual stage, Freud (1905) believed, the infant or young child isfaced with a developmental conflict that must be successfully resolved in order tomove on to the next stage. The heart of this conflict is the degree to which parentseither frustrate or overindulge the child’s expression of pleasurable feelings. Hence,Freud (1940) believed that parental attitudes and the timing of specific childrearingevents, such as weaning or toilet training, leave a lasting influence on personalitydevelopment.If frustrated, the child will be left with feelings of unmet needs characteristic ofthat stage. If overindulged, the child may be reluctant to move on to the nextstage. In either case, the result of an unresolved developmental conflict is fixationat a particular stage. The person continues to seek pleasure through behaviors thatare similar to those associated with that psychosexual stage. For example, the adultwho constantly chews gum, smokes, or bites her fingernails may have unresolvedoral psychosexual conflicts.The Oedipus ComplexA Psychosexual Dramapsychosexual stagesIn Freud’s theory, age-related developmentalperiods in which the child’s sexual urges arefocused on different areas of the body andare expressed through the activities associatedwith those areas.Oedipus complexIn Freud’s theory, a child’s unconscioussexual desire for the opposite-sex parent,usually accompanied by hostile feelingstoward the same-sex parent.identificationIn psychoanalytic theory, an ego defensemechanism that involves reducing anxietyby imitating the behavior and characteristicsof another person.The most critical conflict that the child must successfully resolve for healthy personalityand sexual development occurs during the phallic stage (Freud, 1923, 1940).As the child becomes more aware of pleasure derived from the genital area, Freudbelieved, the child develops a sexual attraction to the opposite-sex parent and hostilitytoward the same-sex parent. This is the famous Oedipus complex, namedafter the protagonist of a Greek myth. Abandoned at birth, Oedipus does not knowthe identity of his parents. As an adult, Oedipus unknowingly kills his father andmarries his mother.According to Freud, this attraction to the opposite-sex parent plays out as a sexualdrama in the child’s mind, a drama with different plot twists for boys and for girls.For boys, the Oedipus complex unfolds as a confrontation with the father for theaffections of the mother. The little boy feels hostility and jealousy toward his father, buthe realizes that his father is more physically powerful. The boy experiences castrationanxiety, or the fear that his father will punish him by castrating him (Freud, 1933).To resolve the Oedipus complex and these anxieties, the little boy ultimately joinsforces with his former enemy by resorting to the defense mechanism of identification.That is, he imitates and internalizes his father’s values, attitudes, and mannerisms.