Evaluate the Extent to Which Freud’s Theory of Psychosexual Development Can Help Us to Understand a Client’s Presenting Issue?
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- Date Submitted: 05/10/2016 05:11 AM
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Evaluate the extent to which Freud’s theory of psychosexual development can help us to understand a client’s presenting issue?
(Word count 2,749 excluding bibliography, references)
Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychosexual development is based on the idea that parents play a pivotal role in the sexual and aggressive drives that form in the early years of their child’s development. Freud (Freud & Philips 2006) proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages - psychosexual stages.
Each stage represents the fixation on a different area of the body and as a person grows physically, certain areas of their body become important as sources of potential frustration, pleasure or both. Freud referred to the instinct or drive which resulted in these fixations as the ‘libido’ and the areas of the body as the ‘erogenous zones’.
Freud believed that life was built around a series of tensions and pleasures; believing also that all tension was due to the build-up of this libido, or sexual energy and that all pleasure came from its release (McLeod 2008). In describing human personality development as psychosexual Freud meant to convey that what develops is the way in which sexual energy accumulates and is released as we mature biologically. McLeod further explains that Freud used the term 'sexual' in a very general way to mean “all pleasurable actions and thoughts”.
I believe this is a crucial point in helping understand what Freud was saying; certainly I have misunderstood Freud to this point and was somewhat dismissive and sceptical of his relevance to understanding behaviour because of the overtly sexual nature of his theory, I could not reconcile sex and sexuality with an infant or young child beyond gender. However, using ‘sexual’ as an expression of ‘all pleasurable actions and thoughts’ makes far more sense.
Freud identified five psychosexual stages; oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. Each of the psychosexual stages...
(Word count 2,749 excluding bibliography, references)
Sigmund Freud’s theory of psychosexual development is based on the idea that parents play a pivotal role in the sexual and aggressive drives that form in the early years of their child’s development. Freud (Freud & Philips 2006) proposed that psychological development in childhood takes place in a series of fixed stages - psychosexual stages.
Each stage represents the fixation on a different area of the body and as a person grows physically, certain areas of their body become important as sources of potential frustration, pleasure or both. Freud referred to the instinct or drive which resulted in these fixations as the ‘libido’ and the areas of the body as the ‘erogenous zones’.
Freud believed that life was built around a series of tensions and pleasures; believing also that all tension was due to the build-up of this libido, or sexual energy and that all pleasure came from its release (McLeod 2008). In describing human personality development as psychosexual Freud meant to convey that what develops is the way in which sexual energy accumulates and is released as we mature biologically. McLeod further explains that Freud used the term 'sexual' in a very general way to mean “all pleasurable actions and thoughts”.
I believe this is a crucial point in helping understand what Freud was saying; certainly I have misunderstood Freud to this point and was somewhat dismissive and sceptical of his relevance to understanding behaviour because of the overtly sexual nature of his theory, I could not reconcile sex and sexuality with an infant or young child beyond gender. However, using ‘sexual’ as an expression of ‘all pleasurable actions and thoughts’ makes far more sense.
Freud identified five psychosexual stages; oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. Each of the psychosexual stages...