Child Development: Freud's Oral Phase

The oral phase begins at birth and lasts eight months. It is characterized by the infant's concern for his mouth and gratification he feels from oral stimuli. The most obvious oral activity the child derives pleasure from is eating. Oral stimulation, however, is also produced by engaging in such activities as sucking, biting, swallowing and manipulating various parts of the mouth. Freud contended that these activities are he child's means of fulfilling his sexual urges. Hence, Eros (the life instinct) makes its appearance. But Thanatos (the death instinct) is also seen since quite frequently children destroy objects they come in contact with, often by biting them. During this phase, the child's personality is controlled by the id. He demands immediate gratification of his wants. Other phases related to Oral Phase:
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Trust vs. Mistrust Primary narcissism Need-satisfying paranoid-schizoid position part-object relations normal autism Birth

Oral stage
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The oral stage: An infant feeding at his mothers breast. In Freudianpsychoanalysis, the term oral stage denotes the first psychosexual development stage wherein the mouth of the infant is his or her primary erogenous zone. Spanning the life period from birth to the age of 21 months, the oral stage is the first of the five Freudian psychosexual

development stages: (i) the Oral, (ii) the Anal, (iii) the Phallic, (iv) the Latent, and (v) the Genital. Moreover, because it is the infants first human relationship biological (nutritive) and psychological (emotional) its duration depends upon the child-rearing mores of the mothers society. Sociologically, the duration of infantile nursing is determined normatively, because the oral stage is especially important in societies that consider the stomach to be the seat of the emotions, as among some African and south-west Pacific Ocean societies that perceive the oral stage as medicinal.[1]

Contents
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1 Oral-stage fixation 2 Criticism 3 References 4 See also

[edit] Oral-stage fixation

Psychologically, Sigmund Freud (18561939) proposed that if the nursing childs appetite were thwarted during any libidinal development stage, the anxiety would persist into adulthood as a neurosis (functional mental disorder).[2] Therefore, an infantile oral fixation (oral craving) would be manifest as an obsession with oral stimulation; yet, if weaned either too early or too late, the infant might fail in resolving the emotional conflicts of the oral, first stage of psychosexual development and he or she might develop a maladaptive oral fixation. The infant who is neglected (insufficiently fed) or who is over-protected (over-fed) in the course of being nursed, might become an orally-fixated man or woman. Said oral-stage fixation might have two effects: (i) the neglected child might become a psychologically dependent adult continually seeking the oral stimulation denied in infancy, thereby becoming a manipulative person in fulfilling his or her needs, rather than maturing to independence; (ii) the over-protected child might resist maturation and return to dependence upon others in fulfilling his or her needs. Theoretically, oral-stage fixations are manifested as garrulousness, smoking, continual oral stimulus (eating, chewing objects), and alcoholism. Psychologically, the symptoms include a sarcastic, oral sadistic personality, nail biting, oral sexual practices (fellatio, cunnilingus, analingus, irrumatio), et cetera.[citation needed]

[edit] Criticism
Since Dr. Freuds presentation of the theory of psychosexual development in 1905, no evidence has confirmed that extended breast-feeding might lead to an oral-stage fixation, nor that it contributes to a person becoming maladjusted or to developing addictions (psychologic, physiologic). The pediatrician Dr. Jack Newman proposed that breast feeding a child until he or she chooses to wean (ca. 24 years of age) generally produces a more psychologically secure,and

independent person.[3] Contradicting the Freudian psychosexual development concept of oralstage fixation, the Duration of Breast-feeding and the Incidence of Smoking (2003) study of 87 participants reported no causal relation between the breast-feeding period and whether or not a child matures into a man or woman who smokes.[4]

Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development: Oral, Anal, Phallic, Latency, Genital

Last updated: 28 Jul 2004

A newborn baby, according to Freud, is bubbling with energy (libido; psychic energy). However, this energy is without focus or direction, which would not allow for survival. How, then, does the child develop the ability to control and direct his/her energy? Psychic energy is an important concept in Freudian psychology. The structure of the mind and development all revolve around how the individual attempts to deal with psychic energy. Raw libinal impulses provide the basic fuel that the mind runs on. But the vehicle (mind) needs to well-formed and well-tuned in order to get maximum energy. In order to understand development (and neuroses), then, we should follow the energy and see where it goes. As with physical energy, psychic energy cannot be created or destroyed in a big picture sense, however it may be dealt with in nonobvious ways. So, where does the infant s, then the child s, the adolescent's, and adult's energy get focused? Freud believed that as development occurs the baby begins to focus on first one object then another. As the infant s focus shifts the style and type of gratification being sought changes.

The focal objects for the developing child's energy serves to define five main stages of psychological development:
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oral (0-18 months) anal (18 months - 3 1/2 years) phallic (3 1/2 years - 6 years) latency (6 years - puberty) genital (puberty - adulthood)

Each psychosexual stage has three main parts: 1. A physical focus: where the child s energy is concentrated and their gratification obtained.

2. A psychological theme: this is related to both the physical focus and the demands being made on the child by the outside world as he/she develops. For each stage, there can be two extremes in psychological reaction - either doing too much or not enough of what is ideal. 3. An adult character type: in the first three stages this adult character type is one that is related to being fixated or stuck at that stage. If a person doesn t resolve the psychological issues that arise at that stage they will always have problems relating to those issues.

Oral stage: Birth - 18 months (approx.)

Physical focus: mouth, lips tongue (sucking). Sucking is the primary source of pleasure for a newborn. Everything goes in the mouth. Sucking = food. Psychological theme: dependency. A baby is very dependent and can do little for itself. If babies needs properly fulfilled can move onto the next stage. But if not fulfilled baby will be mistrustful or over-fulfilled baby will find it hard to cope with a world that doesn t meet all of his/her demands. Adult character: highly dependent/highly independent. If baby becomes fixated at this stage Freud felt that he or she would grow to be an oral character. Mostly these people are extremely dependent and passive people who want everything done for them. However Freud also suggests that another type of oral character is the person who is highly independent and that when under stress the orally fixated person may flip from one type to the other. This exemplifies Freud s doctrine of opposites.

Anal Stage: 18 months - 3.5 years (approx.)

Physical focus: anus (elimination). Until now the baby has had it pretty easy. Now baby is supposed to control bowels. Freud believed baby s sexual pleasure centred around the anus at this time. Psychological theme: self-control/obedience. These things are not just related to toilet training but also the baby must learn to control urges and behaviours (terrible twos). What goes wrong here is either parents being too controlling or not controlling enough (Freud was a great believer in moderation). Adult character: anally retentive (rigid, overly organised, subservient to authority) vs. anally expulsive (little self-control, disorganised, defiant, hostile).

Phallic Stage: 3.5 - 6 years (approx.)

Physical focus: penis. Freud believed that boys and girls both focussed on the penis. Boys: why hasn t she got one? Girls: why haven t I got one? Children become particularly interested in playing with their genitals at this stage. Psychological theme: morality and sexuality identification and figuring out what it means to be a girl/boy. Children, according to Freud have sexual feelings for the opposite sexed parent at this stage (and deal with Oedipus / Electra complexes basically erotic attachment to parent of opposite sex, but since these feelings are not socially acceptable, it may become hostility) and feel some hostility to same-sex parent. Boys experience castration anxiety and girls suffer penis envy. During this time emotional conflicts are resolved by eventually identifying with the same sex parent Adult character: promiscuous and amoral/ asexual and puritanical (Doctrine of opposites again)

Latency Stage: 6 years to puberty --> (approx.)

The latency stage is the period of relative calm. The sexual and aggressive drives are less active and there is little in the way of psychosexual conflict.

Genital stage: post puberty

Physical focus: genitals Psychological theme: maturity and creation and enhancement of life. So this is not just about creating new life (reproduction) but also about intellectual and artistic creativity. The task is to learn how to add something constructive to life and society. Adult character: The genital character is not fixed at an earlier stage. This is the person who has worked it all out. This person is psychologically well-adjusted and balanced. According to Freud to achieve this state you need to have a balance of both love and work.

If you have had problems during any of the psychosexual stages which are not effectively resolved, then you will become fixated at one of the earlier stages and

when under stress will regress more and more to characteristics of that stage.

SIGMUND FREUD began his researches into the workings of the human mind in 1881,
after a century during which Europe and America saw the reform of the insane asylum and an ever-increasing interest in "abnormal" psychological states, especially the issue of "nervous diseases" (which was the first phenomenon that Freud studied, examining the nervous system of fish while gaining his medical degree at the University of Vienna from 1873 to 1881). Freud turned to the issue of psychology after reading in 1884 about Breuer's treatment of hysteria by hypnosis and after studying under Charcot at the Sorbonne in 1885. Freud faced opposition and even ridicule for many of his ideas until a group of young doctors began to follow him to Vienna in 1902, leading to the creation of the Viennese Psycho-Analytic Society and, then later in 1910, the formation of the International Psycho-Analytic Association. Although he often distinguished his ideas from medicine and biology, Freud was especially interested in establishing a scientific basis for his theories and, so, he often turned to biological models in order to underline the empirical basis for what were, by necessity, subjective interpretations of apparently illogical and certainly multivalent symbols (for example, in his analysis of dreams). In A Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis (First Lecture), Freud confesses of the difficulties faced by a psychoanalytical critic at the turn of the twentieth century: no empirical evidence; a reliance on the spoken word, because of the talking cure; the extremely personal (because barbaric) nature of sexual drives, which therefore resist exposure (hence the notion of the unconscious); and civilization's "natural" antipathy to the revelation of the instinctive pleasures that we continually sacrifice for the common good (15.15-24). Despite these caveats, Freud was, indeed, drawn by scientific models for his theories. Although Freud's main concern was with "sexual desire," he understood desire in terms of formative drives, instincts, and appetites that "naturally" determined one's behaviors and beliefs, even as we continually repress those behaviors and beliefs. (As a young student in Vienna, Freud was, in fact, especially fascinated by Charles Darwin's theories of evolution.) Following a biological logic, if you will, Freud therefore established a rigid model for the "normal" sexual development of the human subject, what he terms the "libido development." Here, then, is your story, as told by Freud, with the ages provided as very rough approximations since Freud often changed his mind about the actual dates of the various stages and also acknowledged that development varied between individuals. Stages can even overlap or be experienced simultaneously.

0-2 years of age. Early in your development, all of your desires were oriented towards
your lips and your mouth, which accepted food, milk, and anything else you could get your hands on (the oral phase). The first object of this stage was, of course, the mother's breast, which could be transferred to auto-erotic objects (thumb-sucking). The mother thus logically became your first "love-object," already a displacement from the earlier object of desire (the breast). When you first recognized the fact of your father, you dealt with him by identifying yourself with him; however, as the sexual wishes directed to your mother grew in intensity, you became possessive of your mother and secretly wished your father out of the picture (the Oedipus complex). This Oedipus complex plays out throughout the next two phases of development.

2-4 years of age. Following the oral phase, you entered the sadistic-anal phase, which is
split between active and passive impulses: the impulse to mastery on the one hand, which can easily become cruelty; the impulse to scopophilia (love of gazing), on the other hand. This phase was roughly coterminous with a new auto-erotic object: the rectal orifice (hence, the term "sadistic-anal phase"). According to Freud, the child's pleasure in defecation is connected to his or her pleasure in creating something of his or her own, a pleasure that for women is later transferred to child-bearing.

4-7 years of age. Finally, you entered the phallic phase, when the penis (or the clitoris,
which, according to Freud, stands for the penis in the young girl) become your primary objectcathexis. In this stage, the child becomes fascinated with urination, which is experienced as pleasurable, both in its expulsion and retention. The trauma connected with this phase is that of castration, which makes this phase especially important for the resolution of the Oedipus complex. Over this time, you began to deal with your separation anxieties (and your allencompassing egoism) by finding symbolic ways of representing and thus controlling the separation from (not to mention your desire for) your mother. You also learned to defer bodily gratification when necessary. In other words, your ego became trained to follow the realityprinciple and to control the pleasure-principle, although this ability would not be fully attained until you passed through the latency period. In resolving the Oedipus complex, you also began to identify either with your mother or your father, thus determining the future path of your sexual orientation. That identification took the form of an "ego-ideal," which then aided the formation of your "super-ego": an internalization of the parental function (which Freud usually associated with the father) that eventually manifested itself in your conscience (and sense of guilt).

7-12 years of age. Next followed a long "latency period" during which your sexual
development was more or less suspended and you concentrated on repressing and sublimating your earlier desires and thus learned to follow the reality-principle. During this phase, you gradually freed yourself from your parents (moving away from the mother and reconciling yourself with your father) or by asserting your independence (if you responded to your incestuous desires by becoming overly subservient to your father). You also moved beyond your childhood egoism and sacrificed something of your own ego to others, thus learning how to love others.

13 years of age onward (or from puberty on). Your development over the latency
period allowed you to enter the final genital phase. At this point, you learned to desire members of the opposite sex and to fulfill your instinct to procreate and thus ensure the survival of the human species. To explain the early psycho-drama of your childhood, Freud turned to a dramatic work, Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, in which Oedipus (who, according to a prophecy, is fated to sleep with his mother and kill his father) attempts to escape his fate but, in the process, unwittingly does the very things he was attempting to avoid. Freud therefore coined the term, the Oedipus complex. One should note that anyone can get arrested at or insufficiently grow out of any of the primal stages, leading to various symptoms in one's adult life. (See fixation and regression.)

One thing "you" have surely noticed is the decidedly masculine bent of Freud's story of sexual development. Indeed, Freud often had difficulty incorporating female desire into his theories, leading to his famous, unanswered question: "what does a woman want?" As Freud states late in life, "psychology too is unable to solve the riddle of femininity" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.116). It is for this reason that many feminists have criticized Freud's ideas and one reason why many feminists interested in psychoanalysis have turned instead to Kristeva. (See also Gender and Sex.) To explain women, Freud argued that young girls followed more or less the same psychosexual development as boys. Indeed, he argues paradoxically that "the little girl is a little man" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.118) and that the entrance into the phallic phase occurs for the young girl through her "penis-equivalent," the clitoris. In fact, according to Freud, the young girl, also experiences the castration-complex, with the difference that her tendency is to be a victim of what Freud terms "penis-envy," a desire for a penis as large as a man's. After this stage, according to Freud, the woman has an extra stage of development when "the clitoris should wholly or in part hand over its sensitivity, and at the same time its importance, to the vagina" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.118). According to Freud, the young girl must also at some point give up her first object-choice (the mother and her breast) in order to take the father as her new proper object-choice. Her eventual move into heterosexual femininity, which culminates in giving birth, grows out of her earlier infantile desires, with her own child now taking "the place of the penis in accordance with an ancient symbolic equivalence" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.128). According to Sigmund Freud, personality is mostly established by the age of five. Early experiences play a large role in personality development and continue to influence behavior later in life. Freud's theory of psychosexual development is one of the best known, but also one of the most controversial. Freud believed that personality develops through a series of childhood stages during which the pleasure-seeking energies of the id become focused on certain erogenous areas. This psychosexual energy, or libido, was described as the driving force behind behavior. If these psychosexual stages are completed successfully, the result is a healthy personality. If certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. A fixation is a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual will remain "stuck" in this stage. For example, a person who is fixated at the oral stage may be over-dependent on others and may seek oral stimulation through smoking, drinking, or eating.
Age Range: Birth to 1 Year Erogenous Zone: Mouth

During the oral stage, the infant's primary source of interaction occurs through the mouth, so the rooting and sucking reflex is especially important. The mouth is vital for eating, and the infant derives pleasure from oral stimulation through gratifying activities such as tasting and sucking. Because the infant is entirely dependent upon caretakers (who are responsible for feeding the child), the infant also develops a sense of trust and comfort through this oral stimulation.

The primary conflict at this stage is the weaning process--the child must become less dependent upon caretakers. If fixation occurs at this stage, Freud believed the individual would have issues with dependency or aggression. Oral fixation can result in problems with drinking, eating, smoking or nail biting.
Age Range: 1 to 3 years Erogenous Zone: Bowel and Bladder Control

During the anal stage, Freud believed that the primary focus of the libido was on controlling bladder and bowel movements. The major conflict at this stage is toilet training--the child has to learn to control his or her bodily needs. Developing this control leads to a sense of accomplishment and independence. According to Freud, success at this stage is dependent upon the way in which parents approach toilet training. Parents who utilize praise and rewards for using the toilet at the appropriate time encourage positive outcomes and help children feel capable and productive. Freud believed that positive experiences during this stage served as the basis for people to become competent, productive and creative adults. However, not all parents provide the support and encouragement that children need during this stage. Some parents' instead punish, ridicule or shame a child for accidents. According to Freud, inappropriate parental responses can result in negative outcomes. If parents take an approach that is too lenient, Freud suggested that an anal-expulsive personality could develop in which the individual has a messy, wasteful or destructive personality. If parents are too strict or begin toilet training too early, Freud believed that an anal-retentive personality develops in which the individual is stringent, orderly, rigid and obsessive.
Age Range: 3 to 6 Years Erogenous Zone: Genitals

During the phallic stage, the primary focus of the libido is on the genitals. At this age, children also begin to discover the differences between males and females. Freud also believed that boys begin to view their fathers as a rival for the mothers affections. The Oedipus complex describes these feelings of wanting to possess the mother and the desire to replace the father. However, the child also fears that he will be punished by the father for these feelings, a fear Freud termed castration anxiety. The term Electra complex has been used to described a similar set of feelings experienced by young girls. Freud, however, believed that girls instead experience penis envy. Eventually, the child begins to identify with the same-sex parent as a means of vicariously possessing the other parent. For girls, however, Freud believed that penis envy was never fully resolved and that all women remain somewhat fixated on this stage. Psychologists such as Karen

Horney disputed this theory, calling it both inaccurate and demeaning to women. Instead, Horney proposed that men experience feelings of inferiority because they cannot give birth to children.

Evaluating Freuds Psychosexual Stage Theory

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The theory is focused almost entirely on male development with little mention of female psychosexual development.

His theories are difficult to test scientifically. Concepts such as the libido are impossible to measure, and therefore cannot be tested. The research that has been conducted tends to discredit Freud's theory.

Future predictions are too vague. How can we know that a current behavior was caused specifically by a childhood experience? The length of time between the cause and the effect is too long to assume that there is a relationship between the two variables.

Freud's theory is based upon case studies and not empirical research. Also, Freud based his theory on the recollections of his adult patients, not on actual observation and study of children.

Freud's Psychosexual Stage Theory

Explanations > Learning Theory> Freud's Psychosexual Stage Theory The stages | Fixation | So what

Sigmund Freud developed a theory of how our sexuality starts from a very young ages and develops through various fixations. If these stages are not psychologically completed and released, we can be trapped by them and they may lead to various defense mechanisms to avoid the anxiety produced from the conflict in and leaving of the stage.

The stages

Age

Name

Pleasure source Mouth: sucking, biting, swallowing Anus: defecating or retaining faeces

Conflict Weaning away from mother's breast

0-2

Oral

2-4

Anal

Toilet training

4-5

Phallic

Genitals

Oedipus (boys), Electra (girls)

6Latency puberty

Sexual urges sublimated into sports and hobbies. Same-sex friends also help avoid sexual feelings. Physical sexual changes reawaken repressed needs. Social rules

puberty Genital onward

Direct sexual feelings towards others lead to sexual gratification.

Fixation
Strong conflict can fixate people at early stages.
Oral fixation

Oral fixation has two possible outcomes.

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The Oral receptive personality is preoccupied with eating/drinking and reduces tension through oral activity such as eating, drinking, smoking, biting nails. They are generally passive, needy and sensitive to rejection. They will easily 'swallow' other people's ideas. The Oral aggressive personality is hostile and verbally abusive to others, using mouth-based aggression.

Anal fixation

Anal fixation, which may be caused by too much punishment during toilet training, has two possible outcomes.

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The Anal retentive personality is stingy, with a compulsive seeking of order and tidiness. The person is generally stubborn and perfectionist. The Anal expulsive personality is an opposite of the Anal retentive personality, and has a lack of self control, being generally messy and careless.

Phallic fixation

At the age of 5 or 6, near the end of the phallic stage, boys experience the Oedipus Complexwhilst girls experience the Electra conflict, which is a process through which they learn to identify with the same gender parent by acting as much like that parent as possible. Boys suffer a castration anxiety, where the son believes his father knows about his desire for his mother and hence fears his father will castrate him. He thus represses his desire and defensively identifies with his father. Girls suffer a penis envy, where the daughter is initially attached to her mother, but then a shift of attachment occurs when she realizes she lacks a penis. She desires her father whom she sees as a means to obtain a penis substitute (a child). She then represses her desire for her father and incorporates the values of her mother and accepts her inherent 'inferiority' in society. This is Freud, remember. He later also recanted, noting that perhaps he had placed too much emphasis on sexual connotations.

So what?
Freud's theories are largely criticized now as lacking in substantial corroborative data. He was, however, using a model to describe observed behavior. His ideas may thus still be used as metaphors for actual developmental issues.

Freud's Psychosexual Stages of Development

David B. Stevenson '96, Brown University

[Victorian Web Home >Biology >Psychology >Sigmund Freud]

Freud advanced a theory of personality development that centered on the effects of the sexual pleasure drive on the individual psyche. At particular points in the developmental process, he claimed, a single body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation. These erogenous zones are the mouth, the anus, and the genital region. The child's libido centers on behavior

affecting the primary erogenous zone of his age; he cannot focus on the primary erogenous zone of the next stage without resolving the developmental conflict of the immediate one. A child at a given stage of development has certain needs and demands, such as the need of the infant to nurse. Frustration occurs when these needs are not met; Overindulgence stems from such an ample meeting of these needs that the child is reluctant to progress beyond the stage. Both frustration and overindulgence lock some amount of the child's libido permanently into the stage in which they occur; both result in a fixation. If a child progresses normally through the stages, resolving each conflict and moving on, then little libido remains invested in each stage of development. But if he fixates at a particular stage, the method of obtaining satisfaction which characterized the stage will dominate and affect his adult personality.
The Oral Stage

The oral stage begins at birth, when the oral cavity is the primary focus of libidal energy. The child, of course, preoccupies himself with nursing, with the pleasure of sucking and accepting things into the mouth. The oral character who is frustrated at this stage, whose mother refused to nurse him on demand or who truncated nursing sessions early, is characterized by pessimism, envy, suspicion and sarcasm. The overindulged oral character, whose nursing urges were always and often excessively satisfied, is optimistic, gullible, and is full of admiration for others around him. The stage culminates in the primary conflict of weaning, which both deprives the child of the sensory pleasures of nursing and of the psychological pleasure of being cared for, mothered, and held. The stage lasts approximately one and one-half years.
The Anal Stage

At one and one-half years, the child enters the anal stage. With the advent of toilet training comes the child's obsession with the erogenous zone of the anus and with the retention or expulsion of the feces. This represents a classic conflict between the id, which derives pleasure from expulsion of bodily wastes, and the ego and superego, which represent the practical and societal pressures to control the bodily functions. The child meets the conflict between the parent's demands and the child's desires and physical capabilities in one of two ways: Either he puts up a fight or he simply refuses to go. The child who wants to fight takes pleasure in excreting maliciously, perhaps just before or just after being placed on the toilet. If the parents are too lenient and the child manages to derive pleasure and success from this expulsion, it will result in the formation of an anal expulsive character. This character is generally messy, disorganized, reckless, careless, and defiant. Conversely, a child may opt to retain feces, thereby spiting his parents while enjoying the pleasurable pressure of the built-up feces on his intestine. If this tactic succeeds and the child is overindulged, he will develop into an anal retentive character. This character is neat, precise, orderly, careful, stingy, withholding, obstinate, meticulous, and passive-aggressive. The resolution of the anal stage, proper toilet training, permanently affects the individual propensities to possession and attitudes towards authority. This stage lasts from one and one-half to two years.

The Phallic Stage

The phallic stage is the setting for the greatest, most crucial sexual conflict in Freud's model of development. In this stage, the child's erogenous zone is the genital region. As the child becomes more interested in his genitals, and in the genitals of others, conflict arises. The conflict, labeled the Oedipus complex (The Electra complex in women), involves the child's unconscious desire to possess the opposite-sexed parent and to eliminate the same-sexed one. In the young male, the Oedipus conflict stems from his natural love for his mother, a love which becomes sexual as his libidal energy transfers from the anal region to his genitals. Unfortunately for the boy, his father stands in the way of this love. The boy therefore feels aggression and envy towards this rival, his father, and also feels fear that the father will strike back at him. As the boy has noticed that women, his mother in particular, have no penises, he is struck by a great fear that his father will remove his penis, too. The anxiety is aggravated by the threats and discipline he incurs when caught masturbating by his parents. This castration anxiety outstrips his desire for his mother, so he represses the desire. Moreover, although the boy sees that though he cannot posses his mother, because his father does, he can posses her vicariously by identifying with his father and becoming as much like him as possible: this identification indoctrinates the boy into his appropriate sexual role in life. A lasting trace of the Oedipal conflict is the superego, the voice of the father within the boy. By thus resolving his incestuous conundrum, the boy passes into the latency period, a period of libidal dormancy. On the Electra complex, Freud was more vague. The complex has its roots in the little girl's discovery that she, along with her mother and all other women, lack the penis which her father and other men posses. Her love for her father then becomes both erotic and envious, as she yearns for a penis of her own. She comes to blame her mother for her perceived castration, and is struck by penis envy, the apparent counterpart to the boy's castration anxiety. The resolution of the Electra complex is far less clear-cut than the resolution of the Oedipus complex is in males; Freud stated that the resolution comes much later and is never truly complete. Just as the boy learned his sexual role by identifying with his father, so the girl learns her role by identifying with her mother in an attempt to posses her father vicariously. At the eventual resolution of the conflict, the girl passes into the latency period, though Freud implies that she always remains slightly fixated at the phallic stage. Fixation at the phallic stage develops a phallic character, who is reckless, resolute, self-assured, and narcissistic--excessively vain and proud. The failure to resolve the conflict can also cause a person to be afraid or incapable of close love; Freud also postulated that fixation could be a root cause of homosexuality.
Latency Period

The resolution of the phallic stage leads to the latency period, which is not a psychosexual stage of development, but a period in which the sexual drive lies dormant. Freud saw latency as a period of unparalleled repression of sexual desires and erogenous impulses. During the latency period, children pour this repressed libidal energy into asexual pursuits such as school, athletics,

and same-sex friendships. But soon puberty strikes, and the genitals once again become a central focus of libidal energy.
The Genital Stage

In the genital stage, as the child's energy once again focuses on his genitals, interest turns to heterosexual relationships. The less energy the child has left invested in unresolved psychosexual developments, the greater his capacity will be to develop normal relationships with the opposite sex. If, however, he remains fixated, particularly on the phallic stage, his development will be troubled as he struggles with further repression and defenses.