Motivational Concept- Early Sexual Development - Term Paper Example

Early sexual development Introduction: The field of personality is concerned with human nature and individual difference. Personality theorists are concerned with total person. They are trying to understand how the different aspects of an individuals functioning are interconnected. They give emphasis on the building of personality (structure), the dynamic aspect of personality including motives (processes), development of individuals in to a unique person (growth and development), change and resistance to change of individual (change), and the emergence of disorder (psychopathology). Personality theorists, theorise personality from different aspects, which is done by emphasising on different aspect of personality. Some theorists’ theorised personality by describing psychodynamics, some described structure of personality; many gave emphasis on social construct, perceived reality, and learning.Though they viewed the personality of human being from different view point but these theories obviously have interconnection with each other. Thus the aim of this paper is to link the most controversial theory in history of psychology –personality theory by Freud with other theories. As Freud believed that the central factors in the development of personality was the libido, the force of life instinct and he also believed that instinct motivated behaviour, thus the present paper has focused on the discussion of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and role of instinct to motivate individual for further development to achieve self fulfilment. In this paper the relation between pathology, anxiety and the developmental stages are also highlighted. Conceptualisation: Motivational concept refers to processes aspect of behaviour. The pleasure/hedonic motives stress on seeking pleasure and avoiding pain by either tension reduction or getting incentive. The physiological needs create tension in human being and s/he tries to reduce this by satisfying those needs and gets incentive by achieving the goal. Individual also strives for self fulfilment and has need for consistency and need to know. Growth and development of individual and development of individual difference is dependent on two interconnected factors, they are genetic and environmental factors. Motivation is the individual’s inner directing force, need (for food, shelter, warmth etc.); which arouses organism and direct individual toward a goal directed behaviour. William James (1890) stated that humans are motivated by a variety of instincts, i.e. a biological force that predisposes one to behave in certain way. This is innate, rigidly patterned and species specific. Freud believed that instincts motivate human behaviour, such as “sucking reflex, facial expressions like smiling, hunger, thirst, warmth, helping, aggression, mate selection” (“Motivation & Emotion”, 2008). He conceived that individuals had both life instincts (the Eros) and death instincts (the Thanatos). The life instinct serves the purpose of individual’s survival and racial generation and the energy which is performed by life instinct is known an LIBIDO (Hall et. al1998). The derivative of death instinct is the aggressive drive. Aggression is the self destruction turned to outside object. The derivatives of life and death instincts can neutralise each other, fuse together or replaces each other. Instincts attached to ‘Id’, and that the two basic impulses were sex and aggression. Sexual and aggressive impulses cause motivation. An instinct has four components - source, object, aim and impetus. (McEwen and Wills, 2007) The source is the bodily condition, excitation or the need and the aim is the removal of the excitation; an object is the thing, condition or the behaviour to satisfy the need’ the force or the strength which determines the intensity of the underlying needs is the impetus of the instinct (Hall et all1998). Source and aim of the instinct are constant; source can be changed or eliminated only by physical maturation. New bodily needs, due to maturation, may give birth to new instincts. But object and impetus can vary during the life time. It suggests that psychic energy is displaceable. Thus when a need is thwarted, due to inaccessibility of the object, may be gratified by substituting object (Hall et all1998). Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) gave emphasis on biological as well a sexual development in particular. He brought forward a theory of personality development that focused on the effects of the sexual pleasure drive on the individual psyche. According to Freud, personality develops through a series of stages during which pleasure-seeking energies become focused on certain areas of body - the erogenous zones; that is a single body part is particularly sensitive to sexual, erotic stimulation at particular point of developmental process. These are the mouth, anus as well as the genital area. Healthy personality is the outcome of successful completion of these stages. If it does not happen then it results into fixation, which is an importunate focus on an earlier psychosexual stage, leading to an unhealthy personality. Until this conflict is resolved, the individual remains "stuck" to the stage. According to Freud, the most essential motivating force is the sexual impulse. This is the most important motivating factor for children as well as adults. Here, sexuality refers to all pleasurable sensation from the various areas of skin. The infant enjoys putting everything in the mouth, especially sucking at the breast. Later on focuses moved onto anus and change continues. Based on these, Freud introduced the concept of psychosexual stages of development. The stages may be explained as follows: THE ORAL STAGE: this stage lasts from birth to about one year. The infant obtain sensual pleasure first by sucking and later by biting. This is the stage of building trust as per Erickson (1902 – 1994). By holding and feeding mother provide enough security to the child. Moreover, this is the stage when contract with mother occurs during feeding and teething pain is relived by biting; these all helps to make the mouth the focus of the pleasure, sucking and biting remain the most favourite activities. By holding and feeding the physiological need and safety need, (as described by Abraham Maslow 1970), particular for that age, may also be fulfilled. A baby with little opportunity to be satisfied orally may foster excessive oral character; either Oral-Passive Character: that is characterized by dependency on others. These individuals are often retained an interest in "oral gratifications" such as eating, drinking, and smoking. Oral-Aggressive Personality: a tendency to be verbally aggressive, argumentative, sarcastic, etc. THE ANAL STAGE: this stage lasts from one year to three years old. It is associated with toilet training. At this stage the anus become most erogenous by ‘holding’ and by ‘letting go’. This is the stage of autonomy as per Erickson (1902 – 1994). This is the stage when desire for autonomy first encounter with authorities’ (parents) demand of behaviour connected with excretion, the first control of emerging ego over id. As it is the stage of striving for autonomy, successful resolution of this stage introduces will and determination in the individual. This stage gets pleasure from exclusion of feces and retention. Fixation at the first, i.e. pleasure from expulsion, leads to anal expulsive or anal aggressive personality. This characterized by casual, disorganized, cruel, destructive features. Fixation at the second stage, i.e., pleasure from retention results into anal retentive personality. Individuals of this type are inclined to be particularly a perfectionist, dictatorial, stubborn and clean. THE PHALLIC STAGE: this stage lasts from three to five, six, or seven years old. The stage when children develop a sensual feeling towards the opposite sex parent. In boys, this phenomenon is known as ‘Oedipal complex’ whereas in girls it is known as ‘Electra complex’. In this stage the genitalia is the focus of pleasure and masturbation is a usual tendency. The difficulty associated with this stage is known as Oedipal Crisis, the most controversial part of the theory of Freud. How the Oedipal crisis works: Mother is the first love-object of every one. A child wants mother’s attention, affection, care. The boy feels rivalry towards father for his mothers appeals. For him, his father is bigger, stronger, and smarter. The boy remains anxious about the father knowledge about his desire towards his mother, and afraid of being castrated by the father as revenge. To cope with this anxiety they construct defence- especially the identification. He identifies himself with the father who is the aggressor and attempts to become like him. In future he displaces his sexual impulses from mother to other women. For the girls the situation begins with the focus to father, in addition, they notice the biological difference between male and female; that she does not have penis. Perhaps it was cut off. This is the initiation of castration worries and experience penis envy. Suspected castrator is the mother, so the anger, resentfulness towards mother emerges on the other hand by incorporating her values, the girl tries to get a better romantic relationship with father (Morgan et al.1933), later her feeling displaces from father to other men, and she identifies with mother, the woman who has married the man she desired. With the rejection by mother, and rather challenged by his father. The boy is likely to develop a low perception of self worth to his sexuality. To deal with this he may either withdraw from interaction with the opposite sex people, or may act as the ladies man. However, when a girl is neglected by her father and also rejected by the mother, she is likely to look down upon herself. In contrary to this self centeredness masculinity is the feature of the daddy’s girl; whereas mother’s son becomes more feminine. THE LATENT STAGE: this lasts from five, to puberty, that is, somewhere around 12 years old. During this stage, repression of sexual impulse and expand of ego is present as the child learns more about the world. The most children become fairly calm, sexually, during this years. THE GENITAL STAGE starts during puberty; this is the stage when mature heterosexual impulses appear. This stage also represents the reappearance of the sex drive in adolescence, many of the anxieties of earlier stages resurface but in a more mature form. These stages are related to our emotion. The children whose need is not satisfied at a particular stage, then the psychic energy displace to other object for gratification of needs and the mechanism goes on. As the deficit needs are fulfilled to and homeostasis are maintained the healthy emotion emerges and development towards being needs take place, but as the deficit needs are not fulfilled the achievement of being needs is not possible, moreover deprivation of need result in to emotional turmoil as an outcome of early trauma. Children with secure attachment style with adequate building of trust and adequate oral satisfaction are less prone to anxiety whereas individual fixated at anal stage show more aggressive feature. It is suggested that individual with psychopathology usually regress back to early stage psychosexual; development for getting security. Depressive patients are usually regress back to the oral stage to get loving care of the nurturing mother. Whereas emergence of repressed desire of these stages result into anxiety and it serves as a signal to the ego that its survival is in danger. Freud recognized three types of anxiety: realistic anxiety or the fear of real danger of external world; Neurotic anxiety or the worry about being overcome by instincts from the id (It is not the fear of impulses, it is the fear of being punished for expression of impulses); and Moral anxiety or the fear of conscience, with well developed super ego, people feel guilty for violating moral codes they have learnt. The ego considers the demands of reality, the id, and the superego. But when the anxiety overpowers, the ego tries to defend itself by using defence mechanisms. Discussion: Freud’s theory of personality is the most controversial but accepted theory of history of psychology. His theory was developed on the basis of the fact verbalised by troubled personality and how he saw those facts. As per Gleitman (1991), Freud never studied children, thus made the Psychosexual Development model scientifically more controversial. But his theory get support from findings of other researchers such as Rosenwig (1933), but Freud him self believed on his analytic sessions for “sufficient proof of his ideas”( Gay, 1988). Erickson (1965) described the ‘Eight Stages of Man’, a model for socio-emotional development in humans. Longitudinal cohort studies validated these concepts. As Freud’s description of stages of development stopped at genital stage, Erickson go forward with further elaboration from psychosocial perspective of personality development. As per Erikson, dynamics of personality become more stabilised by five or six years; and erupts and settled down as adolescent moves towards adulthood. This is further reflected in Erickson’s stages. Freud’s stage theory was more criticised for focusing on sexuality, a great deal of our activities are in some fashion motivated by sex. Both good and evil, arise from the outward expression of the sex drive. Many questioned regarding presence of any other force: thus, his concept of death instinct emerge. Scrutiny of modern social behaviour indicates how sex motivates our daily life, in terms of advertisement, media or any other event. As per Westen et al. (1999) ‘The psychosexual stages reflect the child’s evolving quest for pleasure and growing realisation of the social limitations on this quest’. Recent research provides some support for Freud’s psychosexual theories, especially the Oedipus complex. Interestingly, Westen et al.(1999) notes that ‘...most obscenities... reflect one or another of Freud’s stages... perhaps the most vulgar thing someone can call another person in our society has a distinctly Oedipal ring’. Moreover, the recent developmental theories by Eriksson (1965) and Piaget (1950) have focussed far less on sexuality as a determining influence on the development of personality. CONCLUSION: Thus to conclude it can be stated that instinct motivates us to maintain homeostasis and with maintaining needs are gratified. The needs of every psychosexual stage motivate to move forward in further developmental phases. Adequate resolution of need of each stage provides the healthy emotion and helps individual to become more mature in terms of adaptation, but inappropriate resolution leads to unhealthy adaptation with life’s demands resulting in to pathology. Further more, it is also true that, in spite of criticisms Freud’s theory of personality has and intense and significant role in describing personality development. Moreover, his theory shows new path- ways to the future researcher for further study. References 1. Erickson. H.J. (1965). Fact and fiction in psychology. Baltimore: Penguin Books 2. Gay. P.(1988). Freud : A life for our time. New York: W. W. Norton 3. Gleitman, Henry. Psychology. New York: Norton, 1991, 449 4. Hall. C.S., Lindzey G., Campbell J.B., (1998), Theories of personality (4th ed.) John Willy & sons, Inc. 5. James W. (1890). The Principles of Psychology an internet resource developed by Christopher D. Green of York University, Toronto, Ontario. 6. Maslow, A.H. (1970).Motivation and Personality (2nd ed.). New York Harper Row 7. Morgan, C.T. King, R.A., Weisz, J.R. Schopler J.(1933) Introduction to Psychology (7th ed.) Tata McGraw- Hill Publishing Company Limited , New Delhi 8. Piaget, J. The Psychology of Intelligence (1950). Routledge Classics Edition, (2001). New York: Routledge Classics. 9. Rosenwig S. (1933), The recall finished and unfinished tasks as affected by the purpose with which they were performed. Psychological bulletin. 30, 698 10. Westen, Drew. Psychology: Mind, Brain, Culture. New York, 1999 pg. 534, 538. Read More