PSYCHOSEXUAL CHILD DEVELOPMENT THEORY

He believed that the mind is divided into three parts: the conscious mind, preconscious mind, and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind enables an individual to select what to do depending on whether it is acceptable or not; the preconscious mind refers to the memories that can be recalled while the unconscious mind refers to an individual's inner desires. Theory description The theory states that an individual develops his personality through a sequence of steps depending on their ability to control their internal desires and a change in the distribution of their sexual energy (Freud, 2014). Also, a failure to change accordingly in a particular stage results in adulthood problems associated with the particular stage known as fixation. Fixation refers to a reflection to an earlier childhood psychosexual behavior for example if a person is fixated in the oral stage the later the person may continually seek oral stimulation such as smoking and alcohol.

A child would feel capable and more productive if a parent praises a child for the correct use of the toilet and gentle correction in case of a mistake. An individual as such treated in this stage is most likely to be productive and competent in adulthood. On the other hand, if a baby is ridiculed, punished and shamed for mistakes done during this period it leads to traits such as being stringent, obsessive and rigid. The third stage is known as the phallic stage, it occurs between three and six years of age, and the focus of the libido energy is the genitals (Freud, 2017). At this stage, a child begins to differentiate the two sexes. At this stage, a person develops a sexual attention on the opposite sex.

In contrast to the other steps, in this period an individual develops an effort to look at the welfare of other people by learning to care for care for others. Criticism Sigmund's theory is still controversial; there have been criticisms against the argument based on both feminist and scientific critiques (Shute, Rosalyn H. & Phillip T. Slee, 2015). Another criticism is that it had no scientific proof (Shute, Rosalyn H. & Phillip T. Slee, 2015). His theory was not supported by experimental data that can be analyzed empirically. When scientist tried to look into his ideas, they found out that they could not be sustained because for a theory to be valid scientifically it has to be disprovable. However due to the failure to conduct a scientifically relevant research such as observing the correct mode of data collection is its major drawback as seen earlier.