Statement
5.6 The Development of Personality
Two things need to be said before the psychosexual theory is described.
First, people have three levels of awareness: conscious (what we are aware of), preconscious (what we can be aware of if we attend to it carefully), and unconscious (that about which we cannot be aware except under exceptional circumstances). Therapy is often aimed precisely at bringing the unconscious into the conscious.
Second, personality has a structure. It is the result of three factors: the unconscious ever‐present id that is the biological basis of personality; the partly conscious ego that develops in the first year and is the psychological executive of personality; and the superego that develops from the age of 3 to 5 years and is the social and moral component of personality.
Freud thought that personality develops over five stages. Freud called these stages psychosexual because he believed that psychological development depends on the changing expression of sexual energy in different parts of the body as the child matures. Only through successful resolution of these stages can children develop a desirable personality. Fixation in the psychosexual stages can result in “abnormal” and undesirable personality and behavior.
● The oral stage marks the first year of life as babies take in everything through their mouths. The mouth is the focus of sensation and stimu
lation at this stage. People who remain fixated at the oral stage, Freud
maintained, may as adults seek constant “oral gratification” in such activities as smoking, drinking, overeating, debating, nail biting, etc.
They may choose dentistry, the law, opera singing, wine tasting or lecturing, all of which are oral occupations.
● The anal stage, at about age 2 to 3, marks the start of ego development as the child becomes aware of the self and of the demands of reality.
The major issue at this stage is control of bodily wastes, a lesson in self‐control that the child learns during toilet training. People who remain fixed at this stage, Freud thought, may become “anal reten
tive,” holding everything in, obsessive about neatness and cleanliness.
Or they can become just the opposite, “anal expulsive” – messy and disorganized. It is said that those jobs concerned with monitoring, checking, controlling or quality assuring are anal. Because attitudes to money are supposedly acquired in this phase, money‐related jobs such as accountancy are anal.
● The phallic (or Oedipal) stage lasts roughly from 3 to 5 years of age.
Here sexual sensations are located in the penis for boys and in the clitoris for girls. The child wishes to possess the parent of the opposite sex and get rid of the parent of the same sex. Children of this age sup
posedly announce proudly that “I’m going to marry Daddy [or Mummy] when I grow up” and reject the same‐sex “rival.” Freud labeled this phenomenon the Oedipus complex after the Greek legend of King Oedipus, who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. Later, some psychoanalysts used the term Electra complex (from another Greek legend) to describe the female version of this conflict, but Freud himself, and almost all contemporary psychoana
lysts, speak of the Oedipus complex for both sexes.
Boys and girls, Freud believed, go through the Oedipal stage differ
ently. Boys at this stage are discovering the pleasure and pride of having a penis. When they see a female for the first time, they are horrified.
Their unconscious exclaims (in one way or another), “Her penis has dropped off! How could this happen? The girl must have been cas
trated. Who could have done such a thing to her? My powerful father.”
This realization, said Freud, causes little boys to accept the authority of the father, who must have the power to castrate them too. They repress their desire for the mother and decide to be as much like the father as possible. Identification is the process by which they take in, much as being their own, the father’s standards of conscience and morality. The superego has thus emerged.
Freud admitted that he didn’t know what to make of females, who, lacking the penis, couldn’t go through the same steps. He speculated
106 All in the Mind: Psychology for the Curious
that a girl, upon discovering male anatomy, would panic that she had only a puny clitoris instead of a stately penis. She would conclude, said Freud, that she had already been castrated. As a result, girls don’t have the powerful motivating fear that boys do to give up their Oedipal feel
ings. They have only a lingering sense of “penis envy.” The healthy female supposedly resolves penis envy by having children. The neurotic female resolves penis envy by behaving like men, perhaps by having a career or becoming too “masculine.” Women do not develop the strong moral superegos that men do. They feel inferior to men, dislike other women, and develop the unfortunate personality traits of passiv
ity, vanity, jealousy, and “masochism” (taking pleasure in being treated badly). Needless to say, feminists take issue with Freud. By about age 5, when the Oedipus complex is resolved, the child’s basic personality patterns are formed. Unconscious conflicts with parents, unresolved fixations and guilt, and attitudes toward the same and the opposite sex will continue to replay themselves throughout life.
● The latency stage lasts from the end of the phallic stage to puberty. The child settles down, goes to school, makes friends, develops self‐confidence, and learns the social rules for appropriate male or female behavior. Sexual feeling subsides and skills are developed. This is a period of learning social mores and is not typified by psychological trauma of any sort.
● The genital stage begins at puberty and marks the beginning of what Freud considered mature adult sexuality. Sexual energy is now located in the genitals and eventually directed toward sexual intercourse. Not everyone, however, reaches this mature stage. The defense mechanisms of the ego and the displacement of instinctual energy may prevent peo
ple from reaching mature genital sexuality and keep them fixated on
“immature” forms of sexual behavior.
The Oedipus quiz (Osborne 1993) 1. Is the Oedipus complex universal?
2. Why is it necessary to use a myth to describe what is supposed to be an obvious human psychic reality?
3. Why should a child fear castration?
4. Why does sexual curiosity get repressed after the Oedipus complex?
5. Why did Freud never clearly define exactly what he meant by the complex?
6. Why is the positive form of the complex, the desire for the death of the rival, seemingly stronger than the negative form, love for the parent of the same sex?
7. How does the Oedipus complex work in societies where children are brought up, not by mother and father, but by the extended family, or uncles, or communally?
8. Why did Freud initially think there was a total symmetry between the development of boys and girls, and then decide the development of girls was more complex?
9. Why did Freud originally think the fear of castration came from real threats from parents and nurses?
10. Why did Freud later argue that the fear of castration came from hints, fantasies, and, most importantly, from the little boy seeing the
“actually” castrated little girl?
11. What has sibling rivalry got to do with Oedipality?
12. Why are boys and girls supposedly the same but different in the Oedipus complex?
The theory postulates that problems moving from one stage to the next lie at the heart of adult personality. If one moves through the state without any crises, fixations or regressions, it does not mark or influence adult personality. However, problems arising from these stages mark one for life.
Hence there are adult personality traits that arise from childhood experi
ences. Further, opposite patterns can be seen as reactions to the same problem (see Table 5.1).
The first phase lasts up until about 18 months. The issues concern feed
ing and the erogenous zones of the mouth, lips, and tongue, and weaning from liquids onto solids as well as biting when the teeth arrive.
Children who have problems at this stage therefore become orally fix
ated because they were weaned too early or too late or experienced oral deprivation or overindulgence. Many adult activities are very oral: eating, drinking, kissing, talking, smoking, and chewing. The deprived oral pes
simist may, according to the theory, use the mouth as a punishment. He or she may be very sarcastic and choose oral occupations like lawyer or dentist. Some will become food faddists or drink prohibitionists. Others may be speech purists, nail biters or pen chewers. They may enjoy particu
lar Dracula movies or espouse the virtues of vegetarianism.
On the other hand, the indulgent oral optimist may become a sugar, wine or food expert and humorist. Such people are more likely to smoke, to play wind rather than string or percussion instruments, and to like warm, milky, and mild foods. Thus both oral optimists and pessimists live with their problems over early feeding, but in very different ways.
The second phase is the anal phase and here the source of conflict is toilet training. It is about control where the child discovers he can control, please
108 All in the Mind: Psychology for the Curious
or frustrate parents by expelling or withholding feces. Freudians believe this phase is associated with later hostile, sadistic, and obsessive behavior.
Traits are orderliness, parsimony, and obstinacy. It has been suggested that attitudes to time, cleanliness, and money are linked to and associated with this phase. So the anal expulsives are generous, untidy, and chaotic while the anal retentives are mean, meticulous, and mindful. This is the world of petty officialdom, quality controllers, and bankers. Then we have the ideas of anal fixation and anal eroticism, which have come down into popular language.
The third phase is the phallic phase, characterized by the famous Oedipal (and Electra) complex, which lasts from age 2 to 5 years. The erogenous zone is the genitals. Freud regarded this as the kernel of neuroses. The 5‐year‐old boy supposedly (and unconsciously) feels both profound love Table 5.1 Extremes of Freudian personality types
ABNORMAL NORMAL ABNORMAL Oral Traits
Optimism Pessimism
Gullibility Suspiciousness
Manipulativeness Passivity
Admiration Envy
Cockiness Self‐belittlement
Anal Traits
Stinginess Over‐generosity
Constrictedness Expansiveness
Stubbornness Acquiescence
Orderliness Messiness
Rigid punctuality Tardiness
Meticulousness Dirtiness
Precision Vagueness
Phallic Traits
Vanity Self‐hate
Pride Humility
Blind courage Timidity
Brashness Bashfulness
Gregariousness Isolation
Stylishness Plainness
Chastity Avoidance of promiscuity
Happiness Sadness
for his mother and hatred of his father. But no society can tolerate incest and this leads to the castration complex, which is belief that the father revenges the child’s jealous rage by castration, which nullifies the complex.
The phase is characterized by either vanity or recklessness in adulthood or its opposite. So a poor resolution to this conflict may lead to either excessive promiscuity or chastity. It may lead to parent fixation or a con
tinuous looking backward to the past. Pride and doubt, boldness and timidity are personality characteristics associated with the phallic stage.
The phallic stage is followed by latency and then the genital stage, which occurs from adulthood onwards. The sources of conflict are manifold and concern many of the difficulties experienced by all people, establishing healthy relationships, getting a job, and enjoying life. It’s about finding what the Freudians called adapted and healthy defense mechanisms.
Freudian ideas still attract disbelief, indignation, and dismissal. Some have been put to the test and found wanting. Others have demonstrated that aspects of the theory are certainly true.