Freud And Piaget

8 Pages 1992 Words

Introduction
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and Piaget’s cognitive development theory are two well known theories in explaining the development of personality. They both can explain where children are in their development of their personality. Although they aren’t thought of as useful and ‘true’ theories they are very interesting to see how they apply to children. These theories are outlined below and are shown how they apply to a family with three children.

Freud’s Theory
Freud’s psychoanalytic theory was an approach to describing and explaining the development of personality. In describing the development of personality Freud proposed that that it followed a sequence of five different ‘psychosexual stages’, with each stage having crucial emotional events, with the more important ones occurring during childhood. But the main idea in the ‘psychosexual stages’ is that the emotional events involved sexual urges.

If a failure to complete a crucial event in a particular stage either by too little gratification or too much anxiety then a ‘fixation’ results. This fixation causes impairment in personality development causing ‘the individual to retain some of the characteristics of that stage in later life’ (Birch 1997).

The ‘Oxford Psychology Study Dictionary’ describes Freud’s 5 psychosexual stages as follows:
Oral Stage (0 – 2 years)
The mouth is the focus of pleasurable sensations such as sucking, chewing and biting.
The parents are the main sources for gratification for the infant, and the ways in which they meet the infant’s needs are critical in shaping personality later in life.
For example, an ‘oral fixation’ may develop if a nursing mother weans the infant too abruptly. The fixation may reveal itself later in life through activities such as constant nail biting, chewing and cigarette smoking, particularly when anxious.

Anal Stage (2 – 3 years)
The anus is the focus of pl...