The Oral Stage: This stage usually occurs during the first year of life. Of particular emphasis is the mouth. This includes biting, sucking, etc.. How children are fed is supposed to be crucial to proper development. Freud put considerable importance to the manner in which the child is weaned from the bottle or breast. According to Freud, fixation in the oral stage can lead to excessive eating or smoking later in life.
The Anal Stage: This stage occurs in the second year of life. Children supposedly get their erotic pleasure from their bowel movements, through either the expulsion or the retention of the feces. Obviously potty training is crucial in this stage of development, which is society's first systematic effort to regulate the child's biological urges. If a child is severely punished during training, there are a variety of outcomes. Excessive punishment might lead to hostility toward the trainer, who is usually the mother. This might lead to hostility toward women in general. Another possibility is that heavy reliance on punishment might lead to an association between genital concerns and the anxiety that the punishment arouses. This could lead to anxiety about sexual stages later in life.
The Phallic Stage: This stage occurs around age 4. The genital become the focus for the child's erotic energy, mainly through self-stimulation. During this stage the Oedipal complex emerges. Young boys develop an erotically tinged preference for their mother. They also feel hostility toward their father who they view as the competition. Little girls develop the same thing towards their fathers. Around this time they also learn that their genitals are very different from those of little boys, and they develop penis envy. According to Freud, girls feel hostility toward their mother because they blame her for their different anatomy. It is very important for the children to overcome the Oedipal complex. The child has to solve the problem by by giving up the sexual longings for the opposite sex parent, and the hostility toward the same sex parent. If the hostility toward the parent is not fixed, that might prevent the child from identifying with that parent. This can lead to slowed progress throughout the child's development.
The Latency and genital stages: These stages usually occurred after 6 years of life. He believed that from age 6 through puberty, the child's sexuality is latent. Important events during this period during this stage center around expanding social contacts beyond the family. When puberty strikes, the child evolves into the genital stage. All the sexual urges reappear and focus on the genitals again. During this stage sexual energy is geared towards members of the opposite sex, rather than towards oneself.
