Sigmund Freud had a recurring childhood dream expressing two repugnant yet deeply felt wishes: for his father’s death and for his mother’s sexual attention. “Death” and “sexuality” had not meant the same things to him as a boy that they did as an adult, with death implying simply absence or removal, and sexuality meaning any kind of sensual, physical gratification. But Freud concluded that these were logical precursors to the adult concepts. Soon Freud came to believe he was not alone, and that virtually anyone who openly subjected himself or herself to analysis by free association would discover traces of similar uncomfortable childhood wishes. Popular myths and legends, as well as ordinary dreams, seemed to corroborate Freud’s findings with hysteria patients and himself. Oedipus Rex, the classic Greek tragedy portrays a story in which these events occur: The hero, Oedipus, unwittingly kills his father and marries his mother. Freud therefore named this apparently universal constellation of unconscious wishes the Oedipus complex. Oedipal feelings about parents were often accompanied by disturbing memories involving their own bodies. Disgusting and “perverted” ideas involving the mouth, anus, or genitals were reluctantly expressed. Freud elaborated on these ideas in a radically new theory of both childhood and sexuality in his 1905 book, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality.
Freud’s new theory asserted that every baby is born in a state he called polymorphous perversity, and is capable of taking sensual pleasure from the gentle stimulation of any part of the body. Over the course of normal development, however, certain parts of the body become erogenous zones, specific areas of intense satisfaction and sensual pleasure. An infant’s primal experience of nursing causes the mouth or oral zone to predominate as the location of heightened sensitivity. When toilet training begins and the child starts to find pleasure in the voluntary control of bodily functions, the anal zone assumes particular importance. Once the child has developed fuller bodily control, the stimulation of the genital zone becomes a major source of sexual pleasure. Freud believed social factors within the family strongly interact with these psychosexual developments. Freud argued that the conventional wisdom had things backward. Children are not innocents who become corrupted sexually by the evils of the world; instead they are born with primitive, undisciplined, and (from an adult perspective) perverted tendencies they must learn to curb as they mature. Freud emphasized, however, that these highly charged memories are never destroyed but are merely repressed. They persist beneath the surface of consciousness, seeking indirect or disguised forms of expression. Dreams are one natural and usually benign outlet; hysteria symptoms a more extreme and harmful one.
Freud also noted that in the course of their free associations, patients differed in their emphasis on the three stages. Some reported particularly intense images and experiences dating back to toilet training and the anal period of their development. He speculated that the parents of these individuals must have been relatively strict in their enforcement of toilet training, leading to an overemphasis or fixation of infantile sexuality at the anal stage. Freud also detected a particular pattern of adult personality characteristics in these patients; they tended to be relatively orderly in arranging their affairs, thrifty in managing their money and resources, and obstinate in many of their interpersonal interactions. This triad of traits became the prime markets for what Freudian theorists call the anal character. The oral character, which presumably results from relative overindulgence or underindulgence in the earliest years, was marked by a continuing interest throughout life in such oral activities as eating, drinking, smoking, and even talking. The phallic/genital character, by contrast, seemed marked by adult traits of curiosity, competitiveness, or exhibitionism.
Source: Fancher, R. E., & Rutherford, A. (2017). Pioneers of Psychology: A History (5th ed.). W.W. Norton And Company
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