Freud’s psychosexual stages strives in explaining the development of personality by -looking at their past experience regarding to their libido – the sexual energy that a person has- and how badly it is disrupted. The psychosexual stages consist of the oral stage, anal stage, and phallic stage, latent and genital stages. All of the stages have its own consequences when a person becomes fixated in it. But, the two most crucial stage of the development is the anal stage and phallic stage.
The anal stage encompasses the second year of life. The child gets its erotic pleasure from their bowel movements. The crucial event in this stage is toilet training. If a child faces difficulties in developing their relation with the trainer, the child might then develop feelings of hostility towards the trainer. The trainer in this case is very much likely to be the mother. If they have trouble developing a stable relationship between each other the child might feel hostile if near the mother. The child might also develop a generalisation of hostility towards other grown up women because of his bad relationship with his mother while toilet training.
The pinnacle of Freud’s psychosexual stages is the phallic stage. A child enters this stage in around the fourth year of life. Freud noted that this stage is the most crucial of all. In this stage the libido is focused on the genitals. During this stage the Oedipal complex starts to emerge. The boys develop a feeling of resentment and jealousy to the father over the mother. They develop a sexual preference to the mother. On the other hand, the little girls acquire a special attachment to their father. They see themselves as physically deficient. They feel angry to their mother because of their anatomical disability.
Freud’s psychosexual theory was criticized heavily because of its emphasis on sexual pleasure of the child. One of them that disagree with Freud was Erik Eriksson. He then formulates his own theory of personality development and named it the psychosocial development.
Eriksson’s psychosocial theory compiles of eight different level of personality growth. He agreed with Freud that events that happened in early childhood leave a permanent stamp on adult personality. However, unlike Freud, Eriksson theorized that personality continues to evolve over the entire life span. Thus Eriksson noted that his psychosocial theory is applicable over the entire life span. The theory consists of trust vs. basic mistrust, autonomy vs. doubt, and initiative vs. guilt, industry vs. inferiority, identity vs. identity confusion, intimacy vs. isolation, generativity vs. self-absorption, and the final stage integrity vs. despair.
Because the psychosocial theory includes the whole life span, it is to say that every stage is important and crucial. However, one stage stands out of all that is the fifth stage identity vs. identity confusion. During this stage the conflict is one of consolidation of previous developments and integration of decisions about the future. The adolescent organizes the strengths of childhood into a sense of self and a direction of the future. The main focus of this stage is how to deal and prepare ourself to face the future either its getting a job or building an intimate relationship with others. In this stage we start to build up our own understanding of the world. We also put together new values for our super-ego discarding our parent’s values. A person might get confused or disorientated in this stage because they are now entering a whole new stage of their life. They could experience a ‘shock’ because they are now living by themselves and away from their parents.
Evaluating both theories, we could take into account that both try to explain the development of personality by putting them into stages and levels. Eriksson and Freud also agreed that events and experiences that happened in the early childhood have a profound effect on a person’s personality. In terms of validity both of them are hard to prove. Both of them are also lacking supporting evidence for each theory. Freud and Eriksson’s theories are also too general and vague. Both of them also made a generalization to all people that their theory could apply, which is a very impossible thing to do.
Nevertheless both of them have their differences also such as that Eriksson emphasized his theory on our interaction with our social environment and the outside world. While Freud highlighted the physical gratification and that it could get fixated. Eriksson’s theory also encompasses a whole life span of the person. He believes that even though childhood experience is crucial, people do tend to change as time goes on. But Freud believes that childhood experience is the only thing to look for in understanding behaviour. Hence he restricted his theory up until the genital stage.
In conclusion, both theories try to explain the development of personality but from different perspective.
