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The Edexcel Specification expects you to understand Freud's theories as an alternative to the biological theory of aggression. Parts of this page that are essential for that are marked with the red Freud icon; a faint pink Freud means it's less essential
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The Specification also expects you to understand Freud's theories as an alternative to the biological explanation of individual differences. Parts of this page that are essential for that are marked with the green Freud icon
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PSYCHOSEXUAL THEORY OF DEVELOPMENT
Freud takes a very biological view of development. He believes we go through maturation, with different stages to our development that work a bit like a biological clock. At certain ages, new parts of our personality develop, we develop new ways of thinking and feeling and we experience new conflicts.
Freud's controversial view is that at all ages, we are motivated by sexual pleasure. This includes children, who. Freud argues. take sexual pleasure from their own bodies and from contact with their parents, especially their opposite-sex parents. Because of this sexual component, Freud's ideas about development are called "psychosexual". |
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The Psychosexual Stages
Freud's psychosexual stages aren't important for the course. You won't be asked about them and don't need to revise them. I'm presenting them here to give you a complete idea of Freud's theory.
Freud argues that we develop through 5 important stages. At each stage there are particular challenges. If a child struggles at a stage, they may become fixated on it and behaviours and feelings that are typical of that stage, instead of fading, stay with them into adult life.
Freud's psychosexual stages sound weird, but there's common sense and observation behind many of the details. The controversial bit is the stuff about very young children experiencing a pleasure that is sexual.
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APPLYING PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT TO REAL LIFE
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Pre-natal Development
Freud has little to say about the development of the foetus before birth. Some of Freud's followers argued differently. Otto Rank (1924) argued that the "trauma of birth" creates an anxiety in every human baby that shapes their personality for the rest of their lives. Modern psychology goes against the idea of "birth trauma". Janet DiPietro et al. (1996) studied 32-week-old foetuses for 3 months, up to and after birth. They found there was no significant difference between the foetus and the newborn: it is alert, it sleeps, it has hearing and vision and it learns. "[Birth] is a trivial event in development. Nothing neurologically interesting happens" - Janet DiPietro (1996) DiPietro's study is a good example of how developmental psychology has changed from Freud's approach - based on speculation and theory - to the modern biological approach - based on observation and measurement.
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Post-natal Development
Early childhood is, for Freud, the crucial period for development. 4 of the 5 psychosexual stages are in this age group. Freud's identification of the Oral Stage fits in with observations about newborns, who have very basic needs. Because only the baby's brain's right hemisphere is fully active, this ties in with Freud's view that babies are dominated by the id. Freud's idea that newborns get a sexual pleasure from sucking the teat and putting things in their mouth is more controversial. Freud's theory that, in the second year of life, children enter into the Anal Stage fits in with some facts of development. Children in this stage develop language and the left hemisphere catches up with the right. Gross motor skills take a leap forward, with crawling then walking. Freud believes the ego develops at this age, which fits in with a child's language, movement and brain development. However, Freud's argument that the anus is a source of sexual pleasure for children is unproven (and perhaps unprovable).
Some time around the child's 5th year, the Phallic Stage begins, according to Freud. This is an age when social skills develop and children begin to keep secrets, express shame and show clear gender preferences (boys for sport and action toys, girls for horses, princesses and domestic toys). Children of this age report having nightmares and show anxiety. Freud is correct in pointing out that children of this age show an interest in their genitals, but once again, his argument that they get sexual pleasure from this is controversial (to say the least).
Freud argues that children in the Phallic Stage go through a crisis called the Oedipus Complex, in which they must wrestle with their sexual desire for their opposite-sex parent and the fear, guilt and resentment this produces regarding their same-sex parent. For Freud, the Oedipus Complex is the defining moment in childhood development: it's something that shapes who you turn into. Children who resolve their Oedipus Complex reasonably successfully will develop into healthy, well-balanced adults. They will identify with their same-sex parents and take on their gender role: girls will be feminine, boys will be masculine. They will repress their sexual desires until they reach adulthood, then these desires will return as normal (as far as Freud is concerned) heterosexual attachments. Children who don't resolve their Oedipus Complex successfully (and this includes most of us) will grow up with lifelong problems. Some will have exaggerated gender roles and turn into hyper-masculine or hyper-feminine types. Some will struggle with their sexuality or find it hard to control their sexual urges or find security in sexual relationships. They will develop defence mechanisms that may be antisocial or self-destructive, like drug-taking or obsessive jealousy.
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Adolescent Development
For Freud, the final stage of development is the Genital Stage, which begins after puberty. In this stage, young people discover (or, as Freud believes, rediscover) their bodies and sexual pleasure. If they have resolved their Oedipus Complex, they will take a mature sexual interest in the opposite sex. If they have fixations or defence mechanisms (and everybody does), then this interest may be anxious and conflicted, obsessive, exaggerated or just plain weird. 
In the Genital Stage, the cake comes out of the oven. Your personality is complete, with all its fixations and defence mechanisms. You have the rest of your life to come to terms with it.
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Adult Development
For Freud, there are no further important developments in adulthood. Once the Genital Stage begins, we are fully developed. We may grow in education, experience and waistline and we may pick up new skills or interests, but our fundamental psychological characteristics do not change. Not all of Freud's followers agreed. Erik Erikson proposed several more changes that go on throughout life, into adulthood and old age. 
Erikson agrees with Freud that each stage is a "crisis" that must be resolved. Adolescents have a crisis over "devotion & fidelity" and try to sort out their own identity but are held back by confusion over the roles they must play; young adults have a crisis over "affiliation & love" and are driven by a need for intimacy with others, while at the same time seeking isolation.
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EVALUATING PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT
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For example, British psychologist John Bowlby thought that Freud was quite right to focus on the attachment that forms between a mother and child. Attachment is a bond we can observe in animals too. Studying animals to understand human psychology is called ethology. Bowlby argued that attachment was a much better way of looking at development than the Oedipus Complex. He suggested that young children suffer maternal deprivation if they are away from their mother for any period of time (because she is ill, or works, or rejects them) and this leaves psychological scars into adulthood. The advantage of Bowlby's view is that it is much easier to gather empirical evidence in support of it.
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A different criticism of Freud's view is that it puts too much emphasis on young childhood and ignores later childhood (the Latency Stage) and development during adulthood. Erik Erikson was another follower who made changes to Freud's theory. Erikson suggested humans go through far more stages than the 5 Freud identified. He thought these stages went all the way into old age and each is defined by a particular crisis that people in that stage must wrestle with, Erikson claimed newborn babies struggle with the need to trust adults and the impulse to fear them.
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A bigger criticism of Freud's work comes from the American writer Jeffrey Masson (1984). Masson studied Freud's files and diaries and claims that Freud's patients were really suffering from child sexual abuse and that Freud knew this but suppressed the truth. According to Masson, Freud proposed the Oedipus Complex as a less-shocking alternative; the Oedipus Complex suggests that children have sexual fantasies about their parents that last into adulthood, but no actual sexual abuse takes place. If Masson is right (and his ideas are very controversial) then Freud's theory of the Oedipus Complex loss all credibility.
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Differences
The Edexcel Specification expects you to be able to compare and contrast the biological/evolutionary explanation of development with the psychodynamic explanation.
Biological psychologists agree that young children form very strong attachments to their parents, but they don't agree with Freud that these attachments are sexual desires. The Biological Approach views attachment as an evolutionary survival trait. If babies become attached to their mothers, they are more likely to stay safe and be cared for; if mothers attach to their babies, they will look after them and protect them. This attachment is only really needed for the first few years of life, but it might have side-effects for the rest of life too.
However, the Biological Approach doesn't go any deeper than that. Freud looks at the meaning of this attachment, what it feels like and how it becomes part of our personalities. Freud argues that the sort of sexual attraction we feel in later life is the same thing as the early attachment we feel for our mothers; it just expresses itself differently when we are young. There's no clear way to prove (or disprove) an idea like this. Sir Karl Popper argued that ideas that can't be proved or disproved (falsified) aren't really scientific ideas at all, which would be a big criticism of Freud's theories. According to Freud, we are born with a psyche that has certain in-built drives and desires. We all go through the same psychosexual stages in the same order because this sort of development is "built in" to humans on a biological level - it is intrinsic and comes from nature. However, Freud also argues that we are shaped by our childhood experiences, especially our relationship with our parents. This upbringing decides which fixations we get stuck with and they go on to decide our personality later on. The Oedipus Complex is, Freud claims, the most important crisis in childhood and how we resolve it is based on how our parents treat us. Therefore nurture plays a big role too. Some biological psychologists also support nature and nurture. They would say that genes only give us predispositions but that experiences later in life decide whether we act on those predispositions or whether they stay hidden inside us. Another similarity between the two approaches is the focus on child development. Freud argues that children develop the id first and then the ego, but the super-ego doesn't develop until age 5. Biological psychology also suggests that babies use their right brains extensively but then the left brain develops language and logical faculties, but these aren't fully developed until about age 5. A big difference is the scientific status of the two approaches. Freud tried to be objective, but his theory depends very heavily on case studies, qualitative data and his own interpretations. The Biological Approach uses more objective methods, such as twin studies and adoption studies. Since the 1990s, it has also used brain imaging techniques which provide quantitative data about the structure of the brain. Another difference is the use of animal studies. Ethology is a part of the biological approach that studies animals to learn about humans. The psychodynamic approach rejects this; although he focuses on instinct, Freud claims to study what makes us distinctively human, not what we share with other animals. However, both approaches draw similar conclusions about human development. They see it as passing through a series of stages in a fixed order. From an evolutionary perspective, attachment is part of a species' fitness to survive. Freud sees it as part of the life instinct that powers the id. Both perspectives agree that development can be interrupted by some traumatic event or crisis. Then there might be behavioural problems much later in life.. |
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Applications
The main application of Freud's theories is the therapy called psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis explores the unconscious causes of development. The psychoanalyst helps the client explore their own dreams and childhood memories and work out what they mean. Hopefully, the client will learn about the fixations that are acting upon and the unresolved conflicts going on in their unconscious. They may come to self-knowledge. Although you cannot go back and "undo" the fixations, by understanding them better you gain more control over them. Before psychoanalysis, fixations may express themselves as urges you aren't even aware of; after psychoanalysis you can recognise the urge for what it is and perhaps choose to ignore it. A client will normally visit a psychoanalyst once a week and the session will last for about an hour. In stereotypes, the client lies on a couch and talks while, out of sight, the psychoanalyst takes notes. In real therapy, client and psychoanalyst normally sit on chairs facing each other.
Psychoanalysis requires trust and intimacy. That might take months to build up and a course of psychoanalysis could take years. If the psychoanalyst is a qualified doctor (most are), then those sessions can be very expensive. However, a less-expensive version of psychoanalysis is group therapy, in which the psychoanalyst helps a group of clients share their problems, analyse each other and help each other understand their unconscious problems. |
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EXEMPLAR ESSAY
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