What Is Freud’s Theory? Sigmund Freud, known for his development of the psychoanalytical theory of childhood development. In Freud’s theory there five stages that are called psychosexual stages. The five stags are as follows: the oral stage, the anal stage, the phallic stage, the latency stage, and the genital stage. Freud thought that life was all centered around tension and pleasure, leading to his stage being called psychosexual because each stage is a representation of his obsession with libido, a sexual desire, on different areas of the human body. Freud thought that because life was built around the buildup of libido that pleasure came from the discharge of sexual desires. When Freud used the word sexual it was a general word for him that applied to any action or thought that brought pleasure (McLeod, 2008). Freud emphasizes that the first five years are a critical time for the formation of what will be the adult personality. Freud states the in these years the id must be controlled which begets conflict between frustrated desires and social norms. Due to this …show more content…
In this stage the libido is dormant and sexual energy can be used in areas such as school work, or growing friendships. During this stage most of the child’s energy is put into learning new things and developing new skills. Any play time they have is spent with children of the same sex (McLeod, 2008). The final stage in Freud’s theory is the genital stage which take place in the years after puberty into adulthood. In this stage the resolution to sexual frustration is to settle down in a one on one relationship in a persons’ early twenties. Sexual desires are focused on pleasure coming from intercourse with the opposite sex and not on self-pleasure like in the phallic stage (McLeod, 2008).
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