It is common to observe young children, around the age of 2, playing with their feces or acting animated and excited about bathroom references.įreud pointed out that waste is a child's first production. This tough, cynical personality is termed the oral aggressive type.ĭuring the next psychosexual stage, the anal stage, pleasurable sensations become centered on the anus, and children become fascinated with their own waste products. The result, Freud said, was an oral personality.įreud also described a type of person who reacts to an oral fixation by repressing it, using the defense mechanism called reaction formation to develop the opposite characteristics: sarcasm, independence, toughness and cynicism–the exact opposite of the oral type. In any case, such a person is fixated at the oral stage, unable to grow past it. According to Freud, this person is trying to recapture a lost paradise in the oral stage, or perhaps making up for deficiencies in gratification during that stage, or express the pressure of forbidden impulses encouraged during that stage. The person may become obese, or smoke, or chew gum a lot. As an adult, the individual may act like a baby: dependent, pleasure-oriented, gullible, child-like, easily led astray.
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What supposedly happens during the oral stage?įreud said that if a baby gets too much or too little oral stimulation, the baby might be permanently affected. The mouth, a point of intimate contact with the mother, is the first erogenous zone. In primitive cultures, babies nurse for more than a year, sometimes several years. They have well-developed nursing reflexes when born, and during early months of life, most of the baby's pleasure (as well as life-giving sustenance) comes through the mouth.
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The oral stage occurs first of all, in babyhood. If the child received too much or too little gratification during any stage, the result could be mental disturbance as an adult. The Psychosexual Stages according to Freudįreud believed that, as children matured, the libido moved around to several different areas of the body called erogenous (er-ROJ-e-ness) zones. Psychologists of today agree that sexual impulses and conflicts are psychologically important to human beings, but research evidence fails to support the specific theories outlined on this page. However, that does not mean Freud's particular theories are correct. He became notorious, famous, despised, and admired. During the Victorian era, when Freud formed his theory, European culture tended to avoid frank discussions of sexuality.Īll of this made Freud sensational, when he decided sex was at the center of everything. Sexual impulses are not always rational and may seem completely mysterious to unsympathetic people. Sex is also very strange and primitive in the context of civilized life. This lends a general plausibility to the idea that sexual issues are important and psychologically potent. Evolution acts strongly on anything related to reproduction, so sex and everything connected with it is important in animal behavior.
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Breuer, an early mentor and colleague of Freud's, wrote that Freud was "a man given to absolute and exclusive formulations."įreud was aware of Darwin's theory.
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Freud himself described his sexual theory as having all the popularity of "a freshly painted wall."īut Freud stuck to his theory and would not agree to any modification of it. They thought sexual conflicts were involved in some, but not all, mental problems.įreud insisted his sexual theory applied to all mental illness. Many of Freud's early associates objected to the extreme and rather exclusive emphasis he put on sex. Which part of this theory did Freud think was most important? How did Freud's early associates react to his ideas? That may sound extreme but it is actually typical of how Freud thought. He explained almost all unusual psychological phenomena with references to sex.įor example, Freud explained the déjà vu experience by saying it was an unconscious memory of the mother's genitals (Slochower, 1970). To Freud, his sexual theory was his most important work.