melissa@ucscb.UCSC.EDU (66322000) (04/10/88)
A correction (I just learned this stuff in class this week): In article <2232@ttidca.TTI.COM> hollombe@ttidcb.tti.com (The Polymath) writes: >The Freudian stages of development refer to those parts of the body which >are, supposedly, the center of sexual pleasure as the organism matures. >Oral, the first, refers to the child's need to suck at the breast. Anal >refers to the adventures of toilet training. Latent refers to a period >when Freud couldn't find much going on (-: . Phallic refers to the sexual >fascination of puberty. Genital refers to the maturity of adulthood. Actually, the phallic stage is 4-6 yrs old (according to Freud). It begins when the child first encounters his sexuality and develops the Oedipal/Electra complex and ends when he/she resolves it by identifying with the parent of the same sex. The superego is created at this point, as the child adopts the values of that parent. Latent is between 6 yrs old and puberty, and the above description, (-: not- withstanding, is accurate. The genital stage is the puberty stage during which the person resolves his/her sexual impulses into feelings of mature love. Freud felt that everyone starts out bisexual but the normal resolution of the impulses which occurs during the genital stage results in a purely heterosexual lifestyle. Another poster said that Freud's ideas have pretty much been discredited. Some have, but some haven't, and there is a great deal of disagreement. There are a lot of practicing psychotherapists that follow Freud pretty closely, and remember that Freud did manage to cure his patients. At least that is what my Psych professor said yesterday. What Freud gave us that is so important is the idea of the conscious,pre-conscious, and unconscious. This division is still generally considered accurate, and it changed drastically the way people are thought about. Melissa Silvestre melissa@ucscb.ucsc.edu