Inner drives, deep motives, and unconscious needs rooted in childhood—especially in experiences in the first six years—form the foundation of psychoanalytic theory. These basic underlying forces are thought to influence every aspect of thinking and behavior, from the smallest details of daily life to the crucial choices of a lifetime.

Psychoanalytic theory originated with Sigmund Freud (1856–1939), an Austrian physician who treated patients suffering from mental illness. He listened to their remembered dreams and to their uncensored streams of thought, and he constructed an elaborate, multifaceted theory. Much of it concerns child development.

According to Freud, development in the first six years of life occurs in three stages, each characterized by sexual interest and pleasure arising from a particular part of the body. In infancy the erotic body part is the mouth (the oral stage). In early childhood it is the anus (the anal stage). In the preschool years it is the penis (the phallic stage), a source of pride and fear among boys and a reason for sadness and envy among girls. Then, after a quiet period (latency), the genital stage arrives at puberty, lasting throughout adulthood. (Table 2.1 describes stages in Freud’s theory.)

Freud maintained that sensual pleasure (from stimulation of the mouth, anus, or penis) is linked to major developmental stages, needs, and challenges. During the oral stage, for example, sucking provides not only nourishment but also erotic joy and attachment to the mother. Kissing in adulthood is a vestige of the oral stage. Next, during the anal stage, pleasures arise from self-control, initially with toileting.

One of Freud’s most influential ideas was that each stage includes its own struggles. Conflict occurs, for instance, when mothers try to wean their babies (oral stage), toilet train their toddlers (anal stage), deflect the sexual curiosity and fantasies of their 5-year-olds (phallic stage), and limit the sexual interests of adolescents (genital stage). According to Freud, how children experience and resolve these conflicts determines personality lifelong because “the early stages provide the foundation for adult behavior” (Salkind, 2004, p. 125).

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Freud did not believe that new stages occurred after puberty; rather, he believed that adult personalities and habits were influenced by what happened in childhood. Unconscious conflicts rooted in early life may be evident in adult behavior—for instance, smoking cigarettes (oral) or keeping a clean and orderly house (anal) or falling in love with a much older partner (phallic).

Many of Freud’s followers became famous theorists themselves, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Karen Horney among them. They acknowledged the importance of the unconscious and of early childhood experience, but each of them expanded and modified Freud’s ideas. For scholars in child development, one neo-Freudian, Erik Erikson (1902–1994), is the most insightful. He proposed a comprehensive developmental theory.

Erikson described eight developmental stages, each characterized by a particular challenge, or developmental crisis (summarized in Table 2.1). Although Erikson named two polarities at each crisis, he recognized a wide range of outcomes between those opposites. Typically, development at each stage leads to neither extreme but to something in between.

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In the stage of initiative versus guilt, for example, 3- to 6-year-olds undertake activities that exceed the limits set by their parents and culture. They jump into swimming pools, pull their pants on backwards, make cakes according to their own recipes, and wander off alone. Efforts to act independently produce the child’s feelings of pride or failure and then lifelong guilt if adults are too critical or if social norms are too strict. Decades later, most adults fall somewhere between unbridled initiative and crushing guilt, depending on their early childhood experiences.

As you can see from Table 2.1, Erikson’s first five stages are closely related to Freud’s stages. Erikson, like Freud, believed that problems of adult life echo unresolved childhood conflicts. He thought the first stage, trust versus mistrust, was particularly crucial. For example, an adult who has difficulty establishing a secure, mutual relationship with a life partner may never have resolved that first crisis of early infancy, trust versus mistrust.

Every stage echoes throughout life. For instance, in late adulthood, one older person may be outspoken while another avoids saying anything because each resolved the initiative-versus-guilt stage in opposite ways.

In two crucial aspects, Erikson’s stages differ significantly from Freud’s: