Psychosexual development

The stages of infant development prior to full maturity are associated by Sigmund Freud with pleasure-giving or tension releasing areas of the body (the mouth, the anus, the genitals). This concept may be expanded to encompass development on a broader base (Erik Erikson). Thus, as the mouth is the organ by which the baby explores its relationship with its mother, then the oral stage may be broadly defined as the trust and dependency stage at which this relationship is formed and the baby both depends upon and builds up trust in the mother. Likewise, the anal stage is the time when the child is not only gaining independence but also learning to adapt and conform to the rules and conventions of the family. Toilet training is only one of such lessons, and thus the anal stage can be interpreted as the authority and autonomy stage where lessons are learned about autonomy and relationship with authority. The following stage, variously referred to as phallic, genital or oedipal, refers to the time when development is in terms of competitiveness and sharing, as well as simply the formation of three-person relationships. The stage of competition and cooperation, it has been compared with such forms of 'castration anxiety' as the loss of the breast on weaning and the impotence which men tend to invoke in women in a male-dominated society. The three levels have been compared by Heije Faber to three levels of religion and, by Michael Jacobs, with the stages of faith of James Fowler.

In the classic interpretation of Freud's teaching, genetic maturity refers to the ability to reproduce. The psychoanalytic concept of maturity developed from the concept of genital primacy. Genitality is the potential capacity to develop orgastic potency in relation to a loved partner of the opposite sex. The principal characteristic of one concept of maturity is therefore held to be the ability of an individual to attain complete orgastic genital gratification with the opposite sex, since this is the best measure of his ability to surmount the repressive forces of society as well as the press of infantile sexual fixations. Mature sexuality is thus a synthesis of psychobiological activity based in the human body as an organism and an activity as a person grounded in consciousness and culture. Although adult motivation is in this way largely identified with the sex drive, it may be argued that if such a drive is handled in a mature way, it may well harmonize with, and reinforce, general maturity. It is however stressed that it is not in virtue of the fact that genital relationships are satisfactory that other kinds of cooperative relationships by the differentiated individual with differentiated objects are also satisfactory; rather it is in virtue of the fact that such satisfactory mature object-relationships have been established by the individual that true genital sexuality is attained.