Psychosexual Development LITERARY REVIEW
least five general modes of functioning in the oral stage, 1 taking in, 2 holding on, 3 biting, 4 spitting out, and 5 closing. Each of these modes determines a
particular prototype for the development of certain personality traits Hall, 1954:104.
Furthermore, this prototype will shape certain personality traits by the process of displacement and sublimation. It can be generally explained that taking
something in to the mouth is the prototype of acquisitiveness, holding on for tenacity and determination, biting for destructiveness, spitting out for rejection
and contemptuousness, and closing for refusal and negativism Hall, 1954:104. For instance, the child who excessively bites other persons may develop to be a
scornful, sarcastic, and cynic person. However, the process of displacement or sublimation might help the person to be a lawyer, politician, or critic. The
prototypes of the functional modes in the oral stage are a p rime influence in one’s
interpersonal relations and attachments, in one’s economic, social, political, religious a
ttitudes, and in one’s cultural, aesthetic, recreational, athletic, vocational interest and preferences Hall, 1954:107.
2. The Anal Stage
The oral stage is succeeded by the anal stage in which the child must learn to control his instinctual impulse. If the oral stage generates irritating experiences
in which the help of an agent the mother is needed to reduce the pain, in the second stage the child is now capable of controlling his tension-reduction process
to strive for pleasurable feelings and to avoid irritating or painful experiences
Hall, 1954:107. The primary importance of the defecation process is to eliminate the tension and bring relief; this expulsion activity also emanates the prototype of
eliminating primitive discharge reactions such as emotional outburst, temper tantrum, and rage Hall, 1954:107.
During the second year of life, a child must begin the toilet training. This is the first experience for the child to encounter discipline and external authority. It
is the method employed by the mother which determines the outcome of the toilet training such as cleanliness, control, and responsibility Hall, 1954:107. If the
toilet training is conducted with a very strict method and punishment, the child may develop negative traits such as messy, irresponsible, wasteful, and
extravagant. It also may develop a formation reaction a defense mechanism in which a person conducts certain things in opposition to what he hates as the mask
of his feeling of guilt such as compulsive orderliness, meticulous neatness, fastidiousness, frugality, disgust, fear of dirt, and rigidity, and over-controlled
behavior Hall, 1954:108. However, if the mother praises him or gives him a reward for the toilet training, the child will conceive of his conduct as a
productive activity, he has succeeded in creating something valuable because he has pleased his mother Hall, 1954:108. This trait may make him to be a
generous person, a philanthropist, and altruistic person because he is motivated to produce or create things which can please other people as he once conducted
defecation to please his mother.
3. The Phallic Stage
The phallic zone is the last developmental stage of the pre-genital development. It occurs in the third until the fifth year of early childhood life. In
this stage, the child begins to know his genital organ and the pleasures can be evoked by the means of masturbation. Particularly, the sexual feeling toward the
opposite sex parent is intensified during this stage, the boy loves the mother and wants to get rid of the father since he conceives of his father as his rival to get the
mother’s love; while the girl loves her father because her father possesses something which she lacks of the penis envy Hall, 1954:109. This incestuous
loves is what we call as
Oedipus complex;
this term is coined by Freud as correspondence to Greek mythology in which a man named Oedipus kills his
father and marries his mother Hall, 1954:109. This is the most important stage in the psychosexual development during the first five years of the childhood.
Furthermore, the emergence of Oedipus complex leads to the incorporation process of the parents’ standard into the child’s moral or ideal; this is where the
super-ego development takes place Hall, 1954:110. The child realized that he cannot possess his mother because of the threat from his father; he fears that his
father will remove his sexual organ from which he emanates his sexual craving towards his mother, this is called
castration anxiety
. As a consequence, he gives up his hostile feeling towards his father and begins to identify himself with his
father’s values thus the threat will be ceased or reduced. Freud in Eagleton,
1996:136 believes that this process is the first experience in which the child imagines his father as the moral code, the law which must be obeyed, and the
obedience of all the forms of social and religious authority begins with this process. The super-
ego begins to take its form during this period; it is the parents’ value, and especially the father’s which shapes the moral and conscience of the
child. 4.
The Genital Stage The first five years of pre-genital development later followed by a long
quite period in which the sexual impulse is repressed and is directed towards educational and social learning process. It, then, reappears again in the last stage
in the adolescence period. It must be understood that in the first five years of life of the initial sexual development, a child particularly derives the pleasure from
hisher own body, or a narcissistic love Hall, 1954:112. However, in the genital stage a child begins to recognize the external stimuli from which heshe feels
attracted to the opposite sex object. A child has already changed hisher sexual aim into a more definite purpose, the process of copulation which leads to the
biological aim of reproduction Hall, 1954:113. However, the pre-genital aims are not displaced by the genital stage, it
becomes merged and fused to complete as the preliminary of the sexual aim; the activities such as looking, touching, and kissing are connected with pleasure and
they also enhance the excitement until a definite sexual aim is reached Freud, 2010:25. As the longest stage of the sexual development, the genital stage
encounters many inhibitions which can block the normal sexual development. The preliminary which is supposed to be intermediary sexual aim to attain the definite
sexual aim can cause deviation. It occurs when one only lingers at the intermediary process without proceeding to the normal sexual aim in the act of
copulation Freud, 2010:25. The genital stage can be said as the developmental process when all hell breaks loose. If the development is not blocked by certain
inhibitions, the normal sexual course will be attained and he will progress normally into adulthood; yet if some inhibitions prevent the normal development,
a person may become aberrant. He may be incapable of performing the normal sexual act or developing a deviant sexual preference. Such persons cannot feel
sexually satisfied to have a normal sexual act or a normal sexual object.