Post by monica on Nov 27, 2015 15:38:52 GMT
Freud stressed the importance of sexuality in human life generally to the extent that his 'libido' concept which is about life force has become more widely known as a sexual force. His broad definition of human development , which includes oral, anal, and other bodily pleasures, is linked to the phallic-genital.
Freud also saw sexuality as plastic —it can be delayed, transformed, or fixated, and interest can be shifted from one “component drive” or “partial instinct” to another. His work and theories discovered that the sexual drive appears early in human life (infants and young children masturbate, have sexual curiosity, etc.) and follows a typical developmental sequence.
He also insisted that bisexuality and “polymorphous perversity” are universal endowments or potentialities, and he explained sexual perversions as pathological developments, not (or not wholly) as constitutional givens and not as sins. He elaborated on many aspects of the Oedipus complex—the fact of inevitable but tabooed incestuous attraction in families, the associated phenomena of anxiety about castration (or, more generally, mutilation), and of intra-familial jealousy, hatred, and envy, much of it unconscious.
While we might see his work and theories as dated now, given the advances in psychology and medical science, he was in many respects way ahead of his own time.
Freud also saw sexuality as plastic —it can be delayed, transformed, or fixated, and interest can be shifted from one “component drive” or “partial instinct” to another. His work and theories discovered that the sexual drive appears early in human life (infants and young children masturbate, have sexual curiosity, etc.) and follows a typical developmental sequence.
He also insisted that bisexuality and “polymorphous perversity” are universal endowments or potentialities, and he explained sexual perversions as pathological developments, not (or not wholly) as constitutional givens and not as sins. He elaborated on many aspects of the Oedipus complex—the fact of inevitable but tabooed incestuous attraction in families, the associated phenomena of anxiety about castration (or, more generally, mutilation), and of intra-familial jealousy, hatred, and envy, much of it unconscious.
While we might see his work and theories as dated now, given the advances in psychology and medical science, he was in many respects way ahead of his own time.