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The [[concept]] of '''psychosexual development''' began with [[Sigmund Freud]] when he developed his theories of [[psychoanalysis]] in the late [[19th century|19th]] and early [[20th century|20th centuries]]. In the development of his theories, Freud's main concern was with [[sexual desire]], defined in terms of formative drives, [[instinct]]s and [[appetite]]s that naturally determined one's behaviours and beliefs, even as those behaviours and beliefs are continually repressed.
Freud also believed that the [[libido]] developed in individuals by changing its object, through the process of ''[[Sublimation (psychology)|sublimation]]''. He argued that humans are born ''polymorphously perverse'', meaning that any number of objects could be a source of pleasure. Following a biological logic, Freud established a rigid model for that "normal" [[sexual development]] of the [[human being]], or the "libido development". Each child passes through five psychosexual stages. During each stage, the [[Ego, Superego and Id|id]] focuses on a distinct <em>erogenous zone</em> on the body. According to Freud, suffering from [[trauma]] during any of the first three stages may result in <em>fixation</em>. [[Freud]] related the resolutions of the stages with adult [[personality|personalities]] and [[personality disorders]].
Despite their popularity among psychoanalytical psychologists, Freud's psychosexual theories are commonly criticized as [[sexism]], for example, Freud stated that young females develop "[[penis envy]]" toward the males during their psychosexual development. In response, [[Karen Horney]], a German Freudian psychoanalytic, argued that young females develop "power envy" instead of "penis envy" toward the male.
Freud's stages of psychosexual development is culturally popular in American society, for example, commonly people refer to others with [[obsessive compulsive disorder]] as anal.
==The stages==
