Sigmund Freud's Theory of Child Development

Paper Summary:

This paper summarizes and discusses the psychosexual stages of development put forth in Sigmund Freud's "Three Essays on Sexuality". The paper also explains that while almost all of the conclusions drawn by Freud regarding childhood development have been rejected by today's researchers, many of the assumptions underlying Freud's theory of development have been accepted. The paper then goes on to discuss these assumptions and explains that, whether or not a person agrees with Freud's theories, sexuality does not occur all at once and that sexual education is about children learning the values and feelings related to sex.

From the Paper:

"During the third stage, the phallic stage of development, between the ages of two and six, the child derives pleasure through stimulation of the genitals or masturbation. During this period, the child becomes aware of his or her parents as sexual objects, which leads to repression of aggressive and sexual urges towards them and identification with either the mother or the father. Here, according to Freud, the paths of male and female children diverge. Male children begin to desire their mother sexually, but they realize that they cannot do so without killing their father or somehow taking his place. Freud called this the "Oedipal complex". Since actually killing their father is forbidden, male children instead identify with him, attempting to model their own beliefs and behaviors after his. Female children, on the other hand, begin to desire sexually their father, the "Electra complex", in part as a consequence of their own lack of a penis, which sexual intercourse can, in a way, rectify. They begin to resent their mother, in part as a consequence of feeling that their mother is responsible for their lack of a penis. However, since both having sex with the father and killing the mother are forbidden, they satisfy their desires by identifying with the mother. "

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