Research Paper on Psychosexual Development

Introduction

Freud asserts that the personality of a person develops through a series of childhood stages. Freud classifies the psychosexual stages as genital, anal, latent, phallic, and oral. At the oral stage, a child communicates through the mouth, and this can be seen by actions such as sucking reflexes. In essence, a child uses the mouth to eat. In my case, my parents used to observe me trying to derive pleasure from oral stimulation in activities such as sucking and tasting. As my parents claim, it happened between the date of birth and one year old. I depended on my parents for everything (Marcia, 2016). Freud argues that if fixation is experienced, at the oral stage, a child will develop issues with age and dependency. Such that, oral fixation leads to various problems such as nail-biting smoking, eating, and drinking

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When I was three years old, my mother had the challenge to train me on how to use a toilet. Such that, I needed to learn how to control my bodily needs. My mother used praises and rewards to help me feel productive and capable. I believe that by doing so, I grew to be a creative, productive, and competent person (Tischler, 2014). My parents did not shame, ridicule, and punish me for any accidental mistakes.

Stage of Development According to Freud

Freud argues that anal expulsive personality develops in negative outcomes of a child if the parents use inappropriate responses. The negative outcome can be in the form of a child to be destructive, wasteful, and developing a messy personality (Tisdall, 2019). For instance, if the caregiver or the Paris have to strain in training their children at the stage, Freud suggests that an annotation personality develops in which the child is obsessive, rigid, orderly, and stringent.

The phallic stage includes children within three to six years. In this stage, the main focus of libido is based on the genitals. At the phallic stage, kids discover the difference between a male and a female where boys envy their fathers in quest of their mother's attention and likewise do girls even their mothers.

At the latent stage, a child develops relationships, values, and peers outside their family. At the genital stage, the book is based on individual welfare, needs, and interests for others. This day starts at puberty and lasts throughout an individual's life.

Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development relying on Freud's psychosexual theory. Erickson argues that people are motivated by the need to achieve competence in specific areas of there are lives. Erickson claims that people experience is a stage of development throughout their life. Such that, every stage has a task and crisis that people need to resolve. A failure to meet these tasks can result in a feeling of inadequacy. Trust versus mistrust; an infant learns that an adult can be trusted. If a caregiver does not meet the needs of the child, their feelings that may be endangered leading to mistrust, fear, and anxiety. The baby begins to see the world and the environment around as unpredictable.

In my case, I shew preference to specific environment elements such as clothing, toys, and food. At three years, my mother denied me an opportunity to play with sharp objects within the environment. I began to develop doubt in my abilities which inflicted the feelings of shame and reduced self-esteem. However, I had power to initiate activity and control my environment through play and social interaction at age four. At six years, I developed a sense of ambition to explore activities within my limit. Also, I developed a feeling of a sense of purpose and self-confidence. At 12 years, I began to compare myself with my peers. As a child, I developed a sense of pride in completing a task such as family life, social activity, sports, and school work. Infinity developed over my negative repercussions and experiences from my peers and family. Under the age of 12 and 18 years, I began to focus on developing a sense of self. Here, I tried to do what fit me by exploring many goals, attempts, and roles to discover my adult self. The fact that my parents denied me an opportunity to use sharp objects makes me fear knives, razor blades, and needles in my life.

Piaget Development Stages

Piaget explains that children experience four stages in development. The sensorimotor stage is where a child being an understanding of herself and reality through interaction with the social environment. A child learns by assimilation such as, listening, looking, grasping, and sucking. At the pre-operational stage, a child cannot conceptualize abstractly what he required in his physical environment. A child has features such as symbolic representation, artificialism, play, egocentrism, irreversibility, animism, and centration of objects (Beilin & Pufall, 2013). Add concrete operation stage, a child physical experience increases and accommodation accumulate. Here, adolescents think abstractly about creating logical structures that explain the physical experience. At the concrete operation stage, a child develops the ability of class inclusion, transitivity, seriation, reversibility, and conservation. A formal operation, the cognitive development of a child, reaches its final form. In this stage, a person can make a rational judgment without using concrete objects. In this stage, a child conducts and handle themselves with orderliness thinking and mystery of concept by allowing flexibility of mental experiment.

Nature and Nurture

Nature is the biological predisposition effect on human attributes whereas nurture refers to the influence of a person-environment and learning. Nature vs nurture concept posits that human's diversity as a result of elements of a person's environment and genetic makeup. Research reveals that physical traits and mental health disorders run within a family. Such that, a disorder experienced by a biological family member does not imply that a child from the family can I inherit. However, there are chances that a child can develop them. The environment that an adolescent is raised may determine the likelihood of a child growing such health problems (Marcia, 2016). In essence, people can change their gene expressions. Adolescent intelligence is influenced by the combination of both nature and nurture. Intelligence heredity varies between various aspects of cognition. For an adolescent to reduce the chances of inheriting diseases, they need to eat a healthy diet and live in safe schools and communities that instill confidence to every child. By doing so, cognitive development among adolescents is boosted. If a girl is pregnant, she needs to stop using illegal drugs. She needs to seek medical attention from a pharmacist to ensure that the current drug she is using does not cause harm to the baby.

Bowlby's Attachment

An attachment refers to the enduring and deep emotional bond that connects an individual to another across space and time. In this context, an attachment does not necessarily need to be reciprocal. An attachment is linked with particular behaviours of children, like seeking proximity to an attachment figure when threatened. The attachment behavior that parents have towards their children entails responding appropriately and sensitively to the adolescent's needs. Across multiple cultures, the attachment behaviours of parents are universal. The theory of attachment suggests that a parent-child relationship increases and causes significant influence on subsequent development. Bowlby asserts that there is a relationship between a mother and a child in terms of cognitive emotional and social development (Marcia, 2016). For instance, kids are distressful when they are separated from their mother. Regardless of the kids being attended to by caregivers, their anxiety of the mother does not diminish.

The children are attached to their mothers because they feed them. According to Bowlby, the attachment between a child and his mother is compared to "a lasting psychological connectedness between human." A caregiver only provides security and safety for the child. In this context, attachment is adaptive because it promotes a child's chances of survival. Such that, a child has a universal need to see proximity with their mothers when they are subjected to threads or stress.

Faith Development

I found synthetic-conventional faith stage related to my earlier experiences when I was about 13 years old (Marcia, 2016). I developed abstract thinking in the sense that I thought Christianity was not pure with the region as Muslim. Raised from a Catholic family, my parents made the decision that we should follow. However, after listening to my friend Abdul, I realized what people think about the Catholics. I was offended by Salim perception over the Catholic people. I find this my experience related to synthetic convectional faith, and in that, I considered issues raised by Catholic authority very critical. Indeed, I agree that for younger adolescence, power rests with a significant adult and their parents.

As a young Catholic believer, I have always been disappointed by the fact that we have several books in the Bible that are not other doctrines. I believe that we cannot assume the fact that we are all Christians yet we have other books that are not included in the Bible. You find these thoughts related to the individuate-reflective faith stage. I realize that at this stage, their eyes are a kind of dissonance that prompts real questions of faith that I began to address. In this stage, I began to question my own assumption about Catholic assumptions.

Further, I began to question the authority structure of the Catholic Church. For that reason, I was not satisfied with the answer I got from the elders. Therefore, I converted to the Seventh-day Adventist.

Challenges and Success

I feel like being raised in the suburbs of California has boosted my confidence and self-esteem. As a teenager, my mother used to encourage me to work hard in school even though I was coming from a poor background. However, l consistently worked hard in class even though I could not be the best in class. I realize that in every competition, everyone must exert certain control to realize the desired outcome. At the adolescence stage, I was really embarrassed by my grooming style which denied me the freedom of overexpression. For that reason, I went through a lot of trials to venture into the stage. Even though this was a major setback to me, I took it as an encouragement to work hard in life.

References

Beilin, H., & Pufall, P. B. (2013). Piaget's Theory: Prospects and Possibilities. London: Psychology P.

Marcia, J. E. (2016). Psychosocial Stages of Development (Erikson). Encyclopedia of Personality and Individual Differences, 1-13.

Tischler, L. (2014). Anna Freud: A New Look at Development. British Journal of Psychotherapy, 30(2), 154-168.

Tisdall, L. (2019). Stages of development, educational psychology and child-centred education. A progressive education?.