In psychoanalysis, psychosexual development is a central element of the sexual drive theory. According to Sigmund Freud, personality develops through a series of childhood stages in which pleasure-seeking energies from the id become focused on certain erogenous areas. An erogenous zone is characterized as an area of the body that is particularly sensitive to stimulation. The five psychosexual stages are the oral, the anal, the phallic, the latent, and the genital. The erogenous zone associated with each stage serves as a source of pleasure. Being unsatisfied at any particular stage can result in fixation. On the other hand, being satisfied can result in a healthy personality. Sigmund Freud proposed that if the child experienced frustration at any of the psychosexual developmental stages, they would experience anxiety that would persist into adulthood as a neurosis, a functional mental disorder.
Background
Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) observed that during the predictable stages of early childhood development, as introduced in his major work publication Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality in 1905, the child's behavior is oriented towards certain parts of their body, for example the mouth during breast-feeding or the anus during toilet-training. In psychoanalysis, the adult neurosis (an outdated term for certain anxiety disorders, functional mental disorder) is thought to be rooted in fixations or conflicts encountered during the developmental stages of childhood sexuality. According to Freud, human beings are born "polymorphous perverse": infants can derive sexual pleasure from any part of their bodies and any object. Over time, the socialization process channels the (originally non-specific) libido into its more fixed mature forms. Given the predictable timeline of childhood behavior, he proposed "libido development" as a model of normal childhood sexual development, wherein the child progresses through five psychosexual stages – the oral; the anal; the phallic; the latency; and the genital – in which the source pleasure is in a different erogenous zone.
Freudian psychosexual development Sexual infantilism: in pursuing and satisfying their libido (sexual drive), the child might experience failure (parental and societal disapproval) and thus might associate anxiety with the given erogenous zone. To avoid anxiety, the child becomes fixated, preoccupied with the psychological themes related to the erogenous zone in question. The fixation persists into adulthood and underlies the personality and psychopathology of the individual. It may manifest as mental ailments such as neurosis, hysteria, "female hysteria", or personality disorder.
Id, ego, and superego
Oral stage
The first stage of psychosexual development is the oral stage, spanning from birth until the age of one year, where in the infant's mouth is the focus of libidinal gratification derived from the pleasure of feeding at the mother's breast, and from the oral exploration of their environment, i.e. the tendency to place objects in the mouth. The child focuses on nursing, with the intrinsic pleasure of sucking and accepting things into the mouth. Since the ego is not developed beyond the most rudimentary form at this stage (in the oral stage, the id is fully present, the ego begins to emerge and the super ego is not yet developed), every action is based upon the pleasure principle of the id. Nonetheless, the infantile ego is in the process of forming during the oral stage. In developing a body image, infants are aware of themselves as discrete from the external world; for example, the child understands pain when it is applied to their body, thus identifying the physical boundaries between body and environment. The experience of delayed gratification leads to understanding that specific behaviors satisfy some needs; for example, crying gratifies certain needs. Weaning is the key experience in the infant's oral stage of psychosexual development, their first feeling of loss consequent to losing the physical intimacy of feeding at their mother's breast. The child is not only deprived of the sensory pleasures of nursing but also of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. However, weaning increases the infant's self-awareness, through learning that they do not control their environment. The experience of delayed gratification leads to the formation of capacities for independence (awareness of the limits of the self) and trust (behaviors leading to gratification). Thwarting of the oral-stage – too much or too little gratification of desire – might lead to an oral-stage fixation, which can be the root of neurotic tendencies in the developed personality. In the case of too much gratification, the child does not adequately learn that they do not control the environment, and that gratification is not always immediate, thereby forming an immature personality. In the case of too little gratification, the infant might become passive upon learning that gratification is not forthcoming, despite having produced the gratifying behavior.
Anal stage
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