YOUR CHILDHOOD FIXATION AFFECTS YOUR ADULT LIFE DECISIONS

  Sigmud Freud an old psychologist discovered the stages of psychosexual developments in children and culled from this, these different stages of childhood development has a fixation which affects the transition into the next developmental stage. In other words it is believed that personality formation comes from these stages of psychosexual development.

Oral Stage :(Birth to 18 months). During the oral stage, the child is focused on oral pleasures (sucking). Too much or too little gratification can result in an Oral Fixation or Oral Personality. This type of personality may have a stronger tendency to smoke, drink alcohol, over eat, or bite his or her nails. Personality wise, these individuals may become overly dependent upon others, gullible, and perpetual followers not leaders. On the other hand, they may also fight these urges and develop pessimism and aggression toward others.

 Anal Stage :( 18 months to three years). The child’s focus of pleasure in this stage is on eliminating and retaining feces. Through society’s pressure, mainly via parents, the child has to learn to control anal stimulation. In terms of personality, after effects of an anal fixation during this stage can result in an obsession with cleanliness, perfection, and control (anal retentive). On the opposite end of the spectrum, they may become messy and disorganized (anal expulsive). 

Phallic Stage :( ages 3-6): here the pleasure zone switches to the genitals. Here there is the Oedipus complex where the boy child develops unconscious sexual desires towards the mother and sees his father as a competition and they also develop fear that they will be punished by their father for these feelings such as castrating them

Later it was added that girls go through a similar situation, developing unconscious sexual attraction to their father. Out of fear of castration and due to the strong competition of his father, boys eventually decide to identify with him rather than fight him. By identifying with his father, the boy develops masculine characteristics and identifies himself as a male, and represses his sexual feelings toward his mother. A fixation at this stage could result in sexual deviancies (both overindulging and avoidance) and weak or confused sexual identity according to psychoanalysts.

 Latency Stage (age 6- puberty). It’s during this stage that sexual urges remain repressed and children interact and play mostly with same sex peers. There is serious involvement in school activities and development of intellectual ability.

 Genital Stage (puberty on). The final stage of psychosexual development begins at the start of puberty when sexual urges are once again awakened. Through the lessons learned during the previous stages, adolescents direct their sexual urges onto opposite sex peers; with the primary focus of pleasure on the genitals.

              WHATS YOUR FIXATION?