Video:What Is Psychosexual Development?

Transcript:What Is Psychosexual Development?

Hi, my name is Dr. Jean Leahy. I'm a clinical psychologist in private practice in Chicago, and I'm here today with About.com. Today we're going to discuss psychosexual development.

Origin of Psychosexual Development Theory

Psychosexual development was founded by Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist. He's also the father of psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis is also known as the "talking cure," where the patient and the analyst engage in frequent dialogs about the patient's conditions and symptoms. Freud believed personality was developed very early in life through psychosexual stages that each individual goes through.

Stages of Psychosexual Development

There are five of those stages, and they occur at different developmental periods in an individual's life. If they are successful, the individual is considered to have a stable and healthy personality. If there is difficulty with these stages, there can be a fixation, and treatment is centered around those fixations. The psychosexual stages are: Oral, anal, phallic, latent, and genital.

Treating Fixations

A fixation occurs when a child has not passed through a stage successfully, and that will be the focus of treatment. For example, if a child does not pass through the oral stage successfully, he or she may have problems with trusting an individual and may seek out oral habits such as smoking, drinking, overeating.

Freud believe that psychosexual energy, or libido, was the driving force behind many behaviors and problems. His theory is also known as drive theory, the drives of human sexuality, human need for contact and love. While Freud has been criticized in recent decades, new theorists have used his basic foundation as a way to understand human personality.

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