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?