PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
Freud’s theory of psychosexual development finally came to fruition in 1905 with the publication of the Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. This was fully a decade after the earlier publication of the Studies with Breuer. Even so, the theory of psychosexual development, including the notions of pre-genital organization of libido and the libido theory itself, was delayed for another decade until the third edition of the Essays in 1915. Thus, the evolution of Freud’s basic ideas about psychosexual development had to wait a full score of years after the publication of the Studies for their public appearance.
The notion of sexuality which Freud developed in the Three Essays was more or less familiar in that it referred in the first instance to the erotic life of the individual. He also used the concept in a more general sense to include sensations and activities that might be described as sensual since they are sources of pleasure and gratification but might not otherwise be regarded as specifically sexual. In his analysis, Freud demonstrated the connection between such sensual behaviors and activities and levels of libidinal gratification connected with the phases of psychosexual development.
The earliest forms of sensual expression arise specifically in relation to bodily functions that are basically nonsexual, such as feeding and the control of bowel and bladder. Freud arranged these stages of psychosexual development into a succession of developmental phases, each building on and successively subsuming the attainments of the preceding phases. The phases he described were the oral phase, the anal phase, and the phallic phase. During these infantile and early childhood stages, erotic sensations arise from stimulation of the mucosal surfaces of particular body parts or body organs. In the oral phase, it is particularly the mucous membranes of the mouth, in the anal phase the mucous membranes of the anus, and finally in the phallic phase the mucosal surfaces of the external genitalia that provide the primary focus of erotic stimulation.
When the adult form of genital sexual integration is achieved, sexual activity is then dominated by the genital zone. Nonetheless, the capacity for sensual arousal and stimulation deriving from pre-genital or prephallic erotogenic zones retains a functional place in adult sexual activity, specifically expressing itself in preliminary mating activity or foreplay. When such zones are appropriately stimulated, preliminary gratification or forepleasure can be elicited which usually provides a form of preliminary excitation which leads to coitus. In normal sexual development when mature genital potency has been achieved, the sexual act achieves the full end-pleasure of orgasm.
In Freud’s analysis the erotic impulses coming from the pre-genital zones were described as component or part instincts. These part instincts can find their expression in love-making activities, in behaviors of kissing, anal stimulation, biting the love object, and the like. The activities of these component instincts may undergo displacement of various kinds so that different kinds of otherwise nonsexual activities become erotized-for example, the derivation of pleasure from looking at or being looked at by a love object. Ordinarily such component instincts are repressed or are expressed in some restrictive fashion in sexual activity such as varieties of foreplay. Such component instincts, however, may come to dominate the libidinal organization and result in various forms of perversion.
At the beginning of his psychosexual development, the young child is regarded as polymorphous-perverse in his sexual disposition. Sexuality and the forms of sexual gratification at this level are relatively undifferentiated and include all of the part instincts. As development progresses toward adult genital maturity, however, the part instincts become subordinated to the primacy of the genital region. In this context the part instincts normally serve as sources of preliminary excitation which lead toward full genital expression. According to this early theory, then, the failure to achieve genital primacy would result in various forms of psycho-pathology. If the libido became too firmly attached to one of the pre-genital erotogenic zones or if a particular part instinct came to predominate in the libidinal organization, forms of perversion such as exhibitionism or voyeurism would come to replace the normal act of sexual intercourse in the libidinal economy, such that orgastic satisfaction and end-pleasure would be derived from that activity rather than from the normal genital expression.
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