Freud believed that individual differences in adult personality reflect the manner in which the person coped with the conflicts that may have arisen during the stages of psychosexual development. This happens in five during the first five years of life.
The id’s energy, libido, attaches itself to different activities at each stage of development. Freud’s psychosexual stages include:
1. The oral stage, from birth to one year-pleasure is obtained through stimulation of the mouth as in nursing or thumb-sucking;
2. The anal stage, occurring during the second year of life, when the parent attempts to toilet train- gratification is obtained through holding or expelling faces;
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3. The phallic stage, from about age three to six-pleasure is obtained through fondling the genitals;
4. A latency period follows the end of the phallic stage during which the child becomes less concerned with his own body and turns his attention toward skills needed the child becomes less concerned with his body and turns his attention toward skills needed for coping with the environment;
5. The genital stage during adolescence-the youth begins to love others for altruistic rather than self-gratification reasons.