Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence. Laura E. Levine
and control their emotions. This ability to negotiate between the demands of basic drives and the real world is the job of the ego. As the ego develops, children are still motivated by their basic drives, but they are now able to interact in the real world to get their needs met. Finally, sometime between the ages of 5 and 7, children begin to incorporate moral principles that work against the drive-motivated functioning of the id. These moral principles are maintained by the superego. Freud believed that children do not have any conscience, or internal sense of guilt that guides their actions until they develop a superego. Figure 2.1 illustrates how these three parts of the personality operate within an individual.
Id: According to psychoanalytic theory, the part of the personality that consists of the basic drives, such as sex and hunger.
Ego: The part of the personality that contends with the reality of the world and controls the basic drives.
Superego: Freud’s concept of the conscience, or sense of right and wrong.
Figure 2.1 Id, ego, and superego.
Sigmund Freud’s Psychosexual Stages
Freud thought our most basic drive is the sex drive. If you believe that the biological goal of our lives is to pass on our genes, then you might agree with Freud that the sex drive is central to everything else. Along with this, Freud believed that many of our thoughts and feelings about sexuality are hidden in our unconscious mind, the part of our mind of which we are unaware. He outlined five stages in child and adolescent development, which he called psychosexual stages. At each of these stages, sexual energy is invested in a different part of the body, and gratification of the urges associated with those areas of the body is particularly pleasurable. Freud believed that the way these urges are handled during each of these stages determines the nature of an adult’s personality and character.
Psychosexual stages: Freud’s idea that at each stage of development, sexual energy is invested in a different part of the body.
During the oral stage, which lasts from birth to about 18 months of age, infants derive a great deal of satisfaction from activities that stimulate their mouth, lips, or tongue. This is why infants often immediately put anything they get their hands on into their mouth. The anal stage lasts from 18 months to 3 years. At this age the pleasure center moves to the anus, and issues of toilet training become central. Children’s task at this age is to learn to control their bodily urges to conform to society’s expectations. The phallic stage lasts from 3 to 6 years of age. Sexual energy becomes focused on the genitals, and boys and girls develop what has been called “the family romance.” Boys imagine marrying their mother when they grow up and girls imagine marrying their father. Children must learn to give up these desires and begin to identify with the parent of the same sex.
Oral stage: Freud’s first stage, in which infants’ biological energy is centered on the mouth.
Anal stage: Freud’s second stage, in which toddlers’ sexual energy is focused on the anus.
Phallic stage: Freud’s third stage, in which children ages 3 to 6 overcome their attraction to the opposite-sex parent and begin to identify with the same-sex parent.
The latency stage occurs between 6 and 12 years of age. Latent means inactive, and Freud (1953) believed that during this time the sex drive goes underground. Children move from their fantasies of marrying their parent to a new realization that they must take the long road toward learning to become a grown-up. The sex drive provides energy for the learning that must take place, but the drive itself is not expressed overtly. Children transfer their interest from parents to peers (Freud, 1965). At this age children who had cross-sex friendships often relinquish them as each sex professes disgust for the other. This separation of the sexes begins to change at age 12, when young adolescents enter the genital stage. At this point, sexual energy becomes focused on the genital area, and a more mature sexual interest occurs between peers.
Latency stage: Freud’s fourth stage, involving children ages 6 to 12, when the sex drive goes underground.
Genital stage: Freud’s fifth and final stage in which people 12 and older develop adult sexuality.
Freud believed that emotional problems in adulthood derived from difficulties with resolving issues that arise in each of these stages. In his view, those problems could best be handled when earlier difficulties were made conscious through the process of “the talking cure,” called psychoanalysis.
Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Stages
Freud had many colleagues who further developed his theory, but one of the most influential was Erik Erikson (1902–1994). Erikson believed that issues of the ego are more important than those linked with the id and that the development of identity is the central issue for children and adolescents. At each stage in his theory, a conflict arises rooted in the social experiences typical at that stage of development. For this reason, Erikson’s (1963) theory is said to describe psychosocial stages (as opposed to Freud’s psychosexual stages). The way in which we resolve each conflict lays the groundwork for the stages of development that follow.
Psychosocial stages: Erikson’s stages that are based on a central conflict to be resolved involving the social world and the development of identity.
Erik Erikson. Erikson was a psychoanalyst who focused more on the role of social issues in development than Freud and who introduced stages of life that continued through adulthood.
Ted Streshinsky Photographic Archive / Contributor via Getty Images
These stages are described briefly in Table 2.1. Here we describe only his first stage as an example. Erikson’s first stage, trust versus mistrust, describes how infants establish trust in the world around them. Infants are totally dependent on the adults who care for them. When caregivers are dependabley and reliably meet the infant’s needs, the infant learns to trust the world and feel safe and secure in it. However, when caregivers are inconsistent in providing care or are emotionally unavailable, the infant develops a sense of mistrust in the world. Of course, none of us have a completely positive or completely negative set of experiences at any of the stages; therefore, we can think of the two possible outcomes of each stage as two sides of a seesaw, with one side higher than the other but both actively in play. The way infants resolve the issue of trust versus mistrust sets the stage for the way they will go on to deal with the next psychosocial stage called autonomy versus shame and doubt as toddlers.
The other important aspect of Erikson’s theory is that he believed development does not stop in adolescence. He went beyond Freud’s stages to add three stages of adulthood, becoming the first theorist to recognize that we continue to grow and develop throughout our lives. You can use Table 2.1 to review and compare Erikson’s eight psychosocial stages and Freud’s five psychosexual stages.
Table 2.1
Sources: Compiled from Kahn (2002) and Erikson (1963).
Modern Applications of Psychoanalytic Theory
While some concepts in psychoanalytic theory have been supported by research, others have not. Freud’s psychoanalytic