ABSTRACT
Unlike Piaget and Vygotsky and their followers, Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) wasn’t most interested in cognitive development. Rather, his focus was on the emotions. He was a physician who initiated the psychoanalytic movement, treating patients and developing a theory of how the personality functions.
His principal work began with the treatment of people who suffered from puzzling physical ailments that had no physiological explanation. Freud found that they were at the mercy of repressed wishes, typically of a sexual nature, disturbing them from a region he called the unconscious. If these forbidden wishes could be brought to the light of day, the symptoms would frequently go away.
Initially, Freud found that the sexual wishes were of recent origin. But as he worked with more cases, the wishes and fantasies went all the way back to childhood. He therefore developed a theory of childhood sexuality.
The stages of childhood sexuality are the oral, anal, and phallic (Oedipal) stages. Freud placed special emphasis on the Oedipal stage, during which the child between about 3 and 7 develops romantic wishes and rivalries toward parents and other family members. These emotions turn out to be dangerous, creating fears of retaliation, and the child engages in several defensive maneuvers to resolve the conflict. One is the incorporation of a superego, a kind of internal policeman that children use to tell themselves that certain actions would be wrong before engaging in them. With the installment of a superego, the child is forever divided within; she has desires and fantasies, but her conscience won’t allow their expression.
The chapter discusses Freud’s concepts of the ego and id, as well as the superego and two basic criticisms of his theory—that it failed to understand female development and how development varies in different cultural contexts.
