A t the time of its announcement, Freud’s theory of infantile sexuality caused a scandal. Not only did he claim that the small child sucking at the mother’ s breast experiences a kind of pleasure, which Freud without hesitation characterized as sexual, F reud’ s the ory of the sexual drive also turned the of cial and com
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Freud insisted his sexual theory applied to allmental illness. Freud himself described his sexual theory as having all the popularity of "a freshly painted wall.". But Freud stuck to his theory and would not agree to any modification of it. Breuer, an early mentor and colleague of Freud's, wrote that Freud was "a man given to absolute ...
Thus, the infantile sexual mark or identical with Freud’s (1918) Nachträg lichkeit. tile and adult sexu ality. His understanding c omes close and his views on the enigmatic message. of sheer i magination. He writes that if “the sexual has
Freud originally developed that idea along with Breuer in the 1880s. However, as discussedon the page about repression, Freud later changed his theory and decided memories of sexual abuse in childhood were not real incidents but id-generated phantasies.
Boys are also shocked at seeing their sister, mother or other girls missing a penis and begin to have infantile theories of mutilation and fear losing their penis. Freud painstakingly fleshes out childhood theories that confuse children about sexuality, including stories of the stork providing the baby, or how babies come out of the stomach.
Freud's Sexual Theory. To Freud, his sexual theory was his most important work. He explained almost all unusual psychological phenomena with references to sex. For example, Freud explained the déjàvuexperience by saying it was an unconscious memory of the mother's genitals (Slochower, 1970). That may sound extreme but it is actually typical ...
The family drama involves the Oedipal conflict for boys and the Electra conflict for girls. The Family Drama. According to Freud, a little boy in the phallic stage begins to feel vague erotic feelings for his mother. Father is seen as a competitor for mother's affections.
Freud said that if a baby gets too muchor too littleoral stimulation, the baby might be permanently affected. As an adult, the individual may act like a baby: dependent, pleasure-oriented, gullible, child-like, easily led astray. The person may become obese, or smoke, or chew gum a lot.
Freud believed that, as children matured, the libido moved around to several different areas of the body called erogenous(er-ROJ-e-ness) zones. If the child received too much or too little gratification during any stage, the result could be mental disturbance as an adult.
But Freud stuck to his theory and would not agree to any modification of it. Breuer, an early mentor and colleague of Freud's, wrote that Freud was "a man given to absolute and exclusive formulations.". Freud was aware of Darwin's theory.
If you are familiar with the Neil Simon play The Odd Coupleor the old TV series of the same name, you will recognize that Felix Unger was the anal-retentive type, Oscar Madison was anal-expulsive. Simon had the bright idea of putting two opposite anal personalities together for a comedy.
Freud and his followers resisted attempts to test their theories with experiments or other scientific research. In fact, they seemed threatened by the very idea. Mackinnon and Dukes (1962) told of a research psychologist in the 1930s who wrote to Freud full of enthusiasm about a study supporting one of Freud's ideas.