Understanding Psychology (10th Ed)

FIGURE 2 
Freud’s theory of personality development suggests that there are several distinct 
stages.
 Module 
40 
Psychodynamic Approaches to Personality 
441
superego
According to Freud, the 
fi nal personality structure to develop; 
it represents the rights and wrongs of 
society as handed down by a person’s 
parents, teachers, and other important 
fi gures. 
psychosexual stages
Developmental 
periods that children pass through 
during which they encounter confl icts 
between the demands of society and 
their own sexual urges.
fi xations
Confl icts or concerns that 
persist beyond the developmental 
period in which they fi rst occur.
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442 Chapter 
13 
Personality
constantly gratifi ed immediately at the fi rst sign of hunger rather than if the infant 
learned that feeding takes place on a schedule because eating whenever an infant 
wants to eat is not always realistic. Fixation at the oral stage might produce an adult 
who was unusually interested in oral activities—eating, talking, smoking—or who 
showed symbolic sorts of oral interests such as being “bitingly” sarcastic or very 
gullible (“swallowing” anything). 
From around age 12 to 18 months until 3 years of age—a period when the 
emphasis in Western cultures is on toilet training—a child enters the anal stage. At 
this point, the major source of pleasure changes from the mouth to the anal region, 
and children obtain considerable pleasure from both retention and expulsion of feces. 
If toilet training is particularly demanding, fi xation might occur. Fixation during the 
anal stage might result in unusual rigidity, orderliness, punctuality—or extreme dis-
orderliness or sloppiness—in adulthood. 
At about age 3, the phallic stage begins. At this point there is another major shift 
in the child’s primary source of pleasure. Now interest focuses on the genitals and 
the pleasures derived from fondling them. During this stage the child must also 
negotiate one of the most important hurdles of personality development: the Oedipal