1) Oral stage: A baby would typically be focused on the use of its mouth, lips and tongue. Sucking is a baby’s main source of pleasure. Through this act food is received sending signals of comfort to the baby and in turn associating anything in the mouth to lead back to pleasure and comfort.
Psychologically Freud believes the oral stage shows dependency. A baby is extremely depended on the mother and can do little to nothing for itself. Once this stage has been fulfilled the baby can move to the next stage. However, if it is not fulfilled the baby way grow up to be mistrustful or hard to satisfy because there demands are hard to be met. In order to cope certain things may be placed in their mouth to regain that sense of comfort and pleasure they have been lacking. IE: Smokers, over eaters, and nail biters. An Adult who is orally fixated will be highly dependent. Freud believes these people will be extremely passive and dependent with a constant need for someone to take care of them.
2) Anal Stage: After a year or so of a child birth they will start to recognize there anus and the process of excretion. During infancy a baby pooped and it was magically clean. Now during this stage they must learn to control there pooping. Freud believes that a sexual pleasure is centered on the anus at this time because of the self-control and effort that goes into this task.
Psychologically Freud believes the anal stage shows self-control and strength of mind. He believes that it is bigger than learning to use the toilet because it teaches a baby to control impulses and behaviors. If a parent is to controlling or not controlling at all the child may become anal fixated resulting in a person who is overly organized and a perfectionist. IE: Anal-retentive.
3) Phallic Stage: After a child surpasses 3 years of age he moves into the phallic stage where he starts to focus on his genitalia. Freud’s believes that both boys and girls are focused on the penis. Boys wonder why girls don’t have one and Girls wonder why they don’t have one. Children become fully aware of there genitals and become extremely focused on them in this stage.
Psychologically Freud believes that the phallic stage shows the sexual identification of a child and figuring what it means to be a boy or a girl. According to Freud’s Oedipus/Electra complex, he believes all men/women have sexual feelings for the opposite sexed parent at this stage. Since these feelings are “wrong” the sexes become aggressive. Experiencing anxiety and emotional conflicts, which eventually leads them to identify with the same sex parent. Freud believes that everyone has this feeling at one point but some repress it faster than others. If a child becomes phallically fixated as an adult they may become promiscuous or overly attached to a parent.
4) Genital stage: This stage occurs after puberty. The focus is on the genitals and how they are incorporated in maturity and creation. After you repress all of your feelings from the other stages they come back in the genital stage. You learn to deal with them in a way that is constructive to the world.
Psychologically Freud believes the person you have become through all the stages has worked out all the kinks and has become psychologically “well-adjusted.”
In class we watched a documentary “Keep the river on your right” about a man named Tobias who was an anthropologist that lived with cannibals in Peru and spent a majority of his life living with a tribe in New Guinea. The documentary is basically a story of his life as he has grown up and how he got to be the person that he is today. He reveals that once people “accept things as natural” they can be content. He over emphasizes this anytime he talks about money. “I realize that I will never have money, and that’s the way it is.” Tobias’ story would raise some interesting points according to Freud. Tobias talked about his relationship with his mother and how they were extremely close. This could be Tobias’ is orally and phallically fixated. Orally because he was never detached from his mother and become dependent on her. Phallically, because he never repressed his feelings for her. He recalls countless times when she would take her sons to the beach at night and go in to the salty ocean and also Tobias still has yet to get over her death.
Freud might conclude Tobias’ travels as being a defensive mechanism. Tobias recalls a time as a kid when he saw “The Wild man of Borneo” at a carnival, and it being the highlight of his youth. By going off into the wild Tobias may have been trying to go back to a time of youth where he remembered being happy and comfortable. Tobias went into these cultures as an observer and then began practicing as part of the group. Freud might say that his act of wanting to be accepting by these cultures was a way for Tobias to repress his own feelings. Tobias did mention that he had strong sexual desires for a wild jungle man and maybe going to the jungle was a way to fulfill that desire.
I'm not one who is in love with all of Freud’s theories but I do find them interesting. I think there is reluctance to believe in everything he says because not to many people want to admit or believe that there was a time where they were sexually attracted to there parent or that deep somewhere in the sub-conscious this desire still exists. I liked the documentary and I think Tobias got his closure at the end of the film when he finally went back to the cannibalistic tribe in Peru. He said that he wasn’t sure if he wanted closure all these years but he is happy that he went. I think that every person goes through stages in their lives and every beginning always has an ending.
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