Behavior Patterns in Children from the View of Sigmund Freud - Case Study Example

Behavior patterns in children from the view of Sigmund Freud 2007 Outline: A) Developmental stages Oral 2. Anal 3. Phallic 4. Latency 5. Genital B) ‘Family romance’ C) The Id, the Ego and the Super-ego D) Conclusion According to S. Freud personality development theory involves two variables, the interaction of which makes up a personality. These are biological determinants and environment in which parental behavior plays an important role particularly during infancy. According to Freud personality is composed of the id, ego, and superego. In this theory Freud managed to integrate biological and environmental variables – the id introduces instinctual drives while ego helps to keep balance between urges of the id and rules of society, represented by the superego. Freud also introduced stages of personality development depending on one’s focus of instinctual needs. In "Three Essays on Sexuality" (1915), Freud outlined child development in five stages - oral, anal, phallic, latency period, and genital. The theory resulted from Freuds observations during his therapy sessions with clients. The first oral stage comprises children from birth to 18 months. The stage is marked by focus on oral pleasures. The desires are oriented on lips and mouth which is connected with breast sucking. Seeking for oral stimulation Freud called oral-incorporative behavior and explained it with an attempt to get pleasure similar to that of breast sucking. Fixing on this stage means excessive oral stimulation like smoking, excessive drinking or eating. So, oral character develops oral traits to attain pleasure and oral satisfaction. Frustration experienced during oral stage later results in oral-aggressive characteristics which maybe be expressed in hysterical screaming, biting or sarcasm and aggressive gossiping. (Wehr) The influence of the experience acquired on oral stage accompanies an individual throughout his life. This stage impacts person’s perception of the world as a secure place and it’s when the feeling of trust towards others is formed. Deprivation in infancy causes deep complexes which hamper a person to build adequate relationships with other people. During anal stage which a child goes from 18 months to three years an individual’s libido is concentrated on anal. This stage is about rules and regulations in the life of an individual. Experiences acquired during this stage may influence retention and expulsion responses. Correspondingly there are two types of personalities - the anal retentive and anal repulsive. The anal retentive personality is likely to restraint feelings or to overcontrol behavior and avoid conflict and errors. This type of personality is very careful with rules and regulations that’s why they are responsible and meticulous owning a strong sense of duty. On the other hand they are constraint and dependent on other’s opinion. (Wehr) The anal-expulsive is a contrasting personality to anal retentive character type. It is self-confident and independent personality who expresses feeling easily. Expulsives are creative and spontaneous in action but messy and disorganized. (Wehr) During phallic stage ( 3 to 6 year) the pleasure is connected with genitals. It’s the time when children identify their sex-role and accept their sexuality. They find their sexual organs as a source of sexual pleasure and direct their sexual drives towards external objects. That’s why it’s a stage of unconscious sexual desires of a child towards opposite-sex parent. It’s when Oedipus Complex or Electra Complex emerges. Both complexes are characterized by rivalry with the same-sex parent and attachment to opposite-sex parent. Oedipus conflict reflects male sexual desire to a mother and seeing father as a rival. The mother is seen as a source of security and love. Mother is ‘the first love-object’. As Freud puts it in “A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis” (1953a): "We call the mother the first love-object. We speak of love when we lay the accent upon the mental side of the sexual impulses and disregard, or wish to forget for a moment, the demands of the fundamental physical or sensual side of the impulses. At about the time when the mother becomes the love-object, the mental operation of repression has already begun in the child and has withdrawn from him the knowledge of some part of his sexual aims." (p.336) The Oedipus complex according to Freud (1962а) is source of ‘mans sense of guilt … acquired at the killing of the father by the brothers banded together . . . . Whether one has killed ones father or has abstained from doing so is really not the decisive thing. One is bound to feel guilty in either case. . . ." (p.78) The fear of punishment for these feelings is later oppressed and results in identification of a boy with his father as his ego-ideal. This way the feeling of aggression towards the father is oppressed, a boy develops an identification-model and conflict resolves. The girls resolve the Electra Complex which is expressed in sexual attraction to the father.  The complex originates from the girl’s discovery that she as well as other females lack penis while father and other males possess it. Father becomes the love-object while the mother bears the blame for perceived castration. The penis envy is at the root of the Electra complex. The resolution of the Electra complex is not so evident as the resolution of Oedipus complex meaning that girls can remain fixated at the phallic stage. The resolution of the complex takes girls additional developmental stage when penis envy is transformed into feminine identification. If at phallic stage parental models are absent, this leads to problems with ones sexual identity and problems with opposite sex. Parental affection helps to develop healthy sex role models.  During Latency Stage (from six to puberty) sexual desires are repressed and the Oedipus\ Electra conflict is resolved. Genital Stage (puberty on) is awaking of sexual urges when they are directed onto opposite sex peers. The genitals are developed and libido is employed sexually. Parents are ‘the only authority and the source of all belief’ for a small child. The most intense wish in the childhood is to resemble the parent of one’s own sex and longing to be like one. As the child grows, he gets to know other parents and starts to compare his parents with other people. He sees that qualities which he attributed to parents are not always true and begins to criticize them. The feeling of dissatisfaction makes him believe that other parents are more preferable to him. (Strachey, 1959, p.74) Freud approaches developmental theory as the process of escape from parent’s power and love. This liberation happens through daydreaming, play and fantasies. Imaging parents as people with exceptional qualities and then seeing ordinary people with their disadvantages make children assume that they are adopted. Freud called this experience “family romance” (Freud, 1959). The freeing from the authority of parents is one of the most painful experiences on the way of child development. The fantasies about ‘real parents’ comfort a child and allow to “safely express ambivalence and anger toward their parents, all the while encouraging them to develop independent identities necessary to becoming a healthy adults.” (Strachey, 1959, p.75) Freud (1959, p.42) writes: “The tie of affection, which binds the child as a rule to the parent of the opposite sex, succumbs to disappointment, to a vain expectation of satisfaction or to jealously over the birth of a new baby - unmistakable proof of the infidelity of the object of the childs affections.” This negative experience in child’s life and regrets about the need to share love of parents with brother and sisters finds a vent in the idea of being an adopted child. This scenario which Freud believed happens in the life of every individual helps to repress anger and develop independent identity for healthy adulthood. And this does suggest of child’s hostility and bad intentions. This is the way children disguise their affection towards parents and their regret of the days when parents were seen perfect. Freud sees personality as composed of three components –the id, the ego and the super-ego - which interplay to create human behaviors. The first element the id, a term initially used by Nietzsche, is inherited from birth. It’s unconscious layer which introduces instincts and is the source of psychic energy. The id responds for basic needs like hunger and physical comfort. The Id does not care for reality and needs of other people. Freud (1959, p.42) supposes that the id is connected with somatic processes. It helps instinctual needs to find mental expression. The id is not organized by ‘unified will.’ It’s “only an impulsion to obtain satisfaction for the instinctual needs, in accordance with the pleasure-principle.” The id is alien to negation, to the idea of time and space. With time mental processes do not alter. Repressed impressions are immortal and are preserved for years. They just belong to the past and their significance is very low. The id is alien to the ideas of good and evil, that’s moral values. The id processes are dominated by pleasure principle and the Id contains instinctual cathexes which seeks to discharge. So it is unconscious part of the mind which possesses primitive and irrational quality. (Freud,1959 p.42) As a child develops with time, one acquires the second component of the personality- the Ego. The ego is connected with reality and the current situation. It takes into account the needs of other people and their desires. ‘The ego is especially affected by perception’ which has ‘the same signi­ficance for the ego as instincts have for the id.’ At the same time ego as a modified part of the Id is also subject to the influence of the instincts. (Freud, 1962, p.15) "The ego represents what may be called reason and common sense, in contrast to the Id, which contains the passions… The functional importance of the ego is manifested in the fact that normally control over the approaches to motility devolves upon it. Thus in relation to the id it is like a man on horseback, who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse…” (Freud, 1962, p.15) “… the ego is formed to a great extent out of identifications taking the place of cathexes on the part of the id which have been abandoned; the earliest of these identifica­tions always fulfil a special office in the ego and stand apart from the rest of the ego in the form of a super-ego, while later on, as it grows stronger, the ego may become more able to withstand the effects of identifications. (Freud, 1962, p.15) Freud (1959, p.42) believes that the ego is a part of the id “which has been modified by its proximity to the external world.” So the ego represents the external world for the id to satisfy its instincts. For fulfillment of this task the ego should “observe the external world and preserve a true picture of it in the memory traces left by its perceptions.” The ego is a representative of the id in the external world. Unlike the id, the ego tends to ‘synthesise its contents, to bring together and unify its mental processes.’ Freud refers the ego to ‘reason and circumspection’, while the id to ‘the untamed passions.’ The pleasure principle is substituted by reality principle. (Freud, 1959 p.42) So the ego is a part of the id which had been modified by its proximity to reality. So it takes energy from the id. It is weak and dependent part as it is subject to the intentions of the id. Its task is to create conditions so that the id intentions are fulfilled. Actually the ego reconciles the claims of three masters - the external world, the super-ego and the id. The demands from three sides make the ego experience anxiety when these demands are incompatible. On one side the ego being a part of the perceptual system has to fulfill the demands of the external world, on the other hand the ego tries to be in good terms with the id. So it has to balance between the id and reality resolving their conflict if any. Still there’s super-ego which watches the ego in its endeavors and does not care for the demands of the id and reality. If the ego does not act up to the norms of the super-ego, it punishes it with a sense of inferiority and guilt. Acknowledgment of the ego weakness breaks out into anxiety – reality anxiety, moral anxiety and neurotic anxiety. (Freud, 1959 p.42) By five, a child develops the super-ego. The super-ego is a result of moral principles and ethical restraints which social milieu and parents impose on children. Due to the development of the superego people learn to understand what is right and what is wrong. Freud believed that a healthy person has the ego which keeps the balance between the Id and the Superego. The ego is a visible part of the personality. The letter two remain hidden somewhere deep but still they may strongly affect the personality. “The tension between the harsh super-ego and the ego that is subjected to it, is called by us the sense of guilt; it expresses itself as a need for punishment . . . “ The sense of guilt may arise from ‘fear of an authority and ‘from fear of the super-ego.’ “The first insists upon a renunciation of instinctual satisfactions; the second, as well as doing this, presses for punishment.” (Freud, 1962а, p.70) Division of the personality into ego, super-ego and id has no sharp dividing lines. Freud (1959, p.45) supposes that interaction of three components and their comparative dimensions varies from person to person. Functions may also vary as well as undergo a process of involution. So, the formation of the personality is rather complicated process, which according to S. Freud, is influenced by biological determinants and environment. A child develops through stages which reflect one’s concentration on pleasure areas. On the other hand the relationship of child with parents influences one’s further development. Through the childhood a child tries to free oneself from parent’s authority. Freud calls this process ‘family romance’ and it characterizes behavior of all children. Personality development is also determined by three components which are the id, the ego and the super-ego. Their interplay makes up certain traits of the personality like strong sense of guilt which arises from the authority of the super-ego. References Freud, S. Beyond the Pleasure Principle. New York: Bantam Books, 1959. p. 42-3 Freud, S. Civilization and its Discontents. New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1962a Freud, S. The Ego and the Id. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1962 Freud, S. A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New York: Permabook Edition, 1953a Freud, S. The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement. Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series (No. 25).New York: Nervous and Mental Disease Pub. Co. 1917 Freud, S. The Standard Edition. Vol. 7: Three Essays on Sexuality and Other Writings.(1901-1905) Translated by James Strachey. London: The Hogarth Press, 1953 Strachey J. The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud. Volume: 5. New York: Basic Books. 1959. Wehr M. Freuds Developmental Stages From  Personal Encounter. http://inst.santafe.cc.fl.us/~mwehr/PEFreudOralStage.html retr. 20 Oct. 2007   Read More