Psychosexual Stages of Development (Freud)

Definition

Psychosexuality refers to those sequential bodily stages in childhood development that provide psychic and somatic sensual-sexual experiences.

Introduction

Freud’s remarkable idea at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century was that we are all sensual-sexual creatures. Our sensuality, beginning in infancy, provides us with sources of pleasure. Various organs of our body produce this sensation and stimulate and excite us and lead to satisfaction. One of Freud’s influences in his early neurological studies was his mentor Brücke who he followed in the belief that all mental functions can be reduced to physical, chemical states. Thus, the biology of the body was critical. Freud believed in the somatic sources of our pleasure and its biological instinctual origins. He called sensual-sexual experiences the libidinal instincts (Freud 1905). He outlined his understanding of the beginning of our sexual pleasures and their shaping powers for our sexual...