ious sexual desire for his mother takes over and the erogenous zone shifts to the genitals. The child begins to see his father as a rival and grows to fear that his father will punish him. The child eventually copes with this problem of having his father as a rival by identifying with his father and trying to act like him. By identifying with the father the child acquires a sense of being a male. In this stage, the ego begins to strongly develop by adopting some of the parents’ values and characteristics. This identifying with the father and the collection of feelings against the father is known as the Oedipus complex. A problem arises here in Freud’s ideas, as he said that it is only males that go through a stage of love for one and hatred for the other parent. Many psychoanalysts believe that girls too go through a similar complex, the Electra complex, but Freud did not believe this. After the phallic stage comes the latency stage. In this stage a child will begin to interact with peers of the same sex. It is in this stage that the superego begins to develop as the child learns to deal with problems that arise between him and his peers. The latency stage usally lasts from six years old until puberty. Latency eventually gives way to the genital stage. At this stage, youths generally start exhibiting sexual feelings towards one another.Problems can arise in people during any of the psychosexual stages. By being over- or under-indulged in the erogenous zone during one of the psychosexual stages, a strong conflict can arise and the person may become fixed to that stage. One, for example, who has become locked on the oral stage, may suck his thumb as a growing child, or even as an adult may start smoking or overeating to fulfill his oral desires. When the ego fears losing control of the demands of the ego and superego, anxiety develops. Anxiety is a price that we pay for living in society. Anxiety differs from a ...
