Psychosexual Stages

-In Freudian theory, the childhood stages of development

 during which the id’s pleasure seeking energies are 

focused on different parts of the body 

-The stages include: oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital

-A person can become “fixated” or stuck at a stage and as an adult attempt to achieve pleasure as in ways that are equivalent to how it was achieved in these stages

Oedipus Complex

-Boys feel hostility and jealousy towards their fathers but knows their father is more powerful.  This leads to…

-Castration Anxiety results in boys who feel their father will punish them by castrating them.

-Resolve this through Identification – imitating and internalizing one’s father’s values, attitudes and mannerisms.  

-The fact that only the father can have sexual relations with the mother becomes internalized in the boy as taboo against incest in the boy’s superego.

Electra Complex

-Girls also have incestuous feelings for their dad and compete with their mother.

-Penis Envy – Little girl suffer from deprivation and loss and blames her mother for “sending her into the world insufficiently equipped” causing her to resent her mother

-In an attempt to take her mother’s place she eventually identifies with her mother

-Fixation can lead to excessive masculinity in males and the need for attention or domination in females