Theories Of Child Development As They Pertain To Middle Childhood And Adolescence

11 Pages 2667 Words

nalytic theory has its beginnings in the work of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) who is considered to be the father of the psychoanalytic or other wise known as the psychodynamic theory. Freud’s theory dealt with personality and how it was developed and how it affected behavior and mental processes. Freud basically stated that personality and therefore development of the personality was mostly unconscious. And that the personality is divided into three structures: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id, working off the pleasure principle was only focused on immediate gratification of instinctual desires such as sex and aggression. The ego, working off the reality principle was in the service of the id, but dealt with the limitations and laws of society that barred immediate pleasure. The superego would be the conscience of the personality and would represent the values and standards of the parents and be the moral guide.
Now, conflicts would arise because of the pre-wired instincts of the individual for life and death and between the id and society. The id’s sexual and aggressive drives which are derived by the life and death instincts would conflict with society’s pressure which are internalized in the superego structure. These conflicts would create anxiety and the ego would regulate this tension by using defense mechanisms. These resolutions would become observable in healthy and unhealthy acts from repression to Freudian slips to sublimation to projection.
Freud’s great contribution in the field of developmental psychology is that of psychosexual developmental stages. The actual merit of each stage is hotly disputed, but the notion of developmental stages has still kept an honored place in the field because it supplied a new perspective to view development and it emphasized the importance of family relationships and early childhood experiences. For Freud, there are five stages of psychosexual development: the or...