Psychology: Human Development

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that human development was fueled by inner forces. He believed
the most powerful of all inner forces was our sexual being. Freud linked
everything with sex. This includes any bodily pleasure whatsoever. Thus, when
Freud discusses the sexual needs of children, they are not the same kind of
sexual needs that an adult would experience. Children experienced sexual
gratification in different ways. Sucking their thumbs or retaining their
excrement could be seen as sexual gratification for small children. Freud also
specified certain areas of our body as erogenous zones. Those areas included the
mouth and genitals. This all fit in to Freud's obsession with sex. An obsession
that could be linked to the era that Freud lived in. It was a very conservative
period in history. Sexual feelings were often repressed.
Freud's theory on human development could be labeled the psychosexual
stages of development. Freud believed human beings passed through different
stages in their life based on ...

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of psychosexual
development. This name comes from the legendary king, Oedipus, who killed his
father and married his mother. During this stage children take interest in their
sexual organs. Soon they notice differences and similarities between themselves
and their parents. Each sex wants to be with the parent of the other sex, for
girls this is referred to as the elektra complex. Once the children realize they
can not be with their mother or father, they identify with the parent of the
same sex.
The next stage is called the stage of Latency. This stage is
characterized by a lack of change or absence of erogenous zones. After the
realization that the child can not be with a parent ...

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