Sigmund Freud believed personality to originate in fulfilment or inadequacy of the psychosexual stages of development. Personality was a dynamic of the id, ego, and superego, conscious and unconscious forces that were biologically innate. Instead of having control over one’s thoughts Freud believed tendencies came from fixation to a particular psychosexual stage and to its relief required self-reflection of the past.

Application Questions

1. According to Freud, Steve’s attraction to women is externally motivated because the personality system utilized is the id. The desire he has for women is solely instinctual motivation.
2. According to Freud, Steve is not aware of why he interacts with women on only a sexual basis because the habit has formed in his unconscious.
3. The psychic energy motivating Steve is libido.
4. According to Freud’s belief in personality shaped by conflicts of id, ego, and superego, Steve displays a personality type of unresolved conflicts of the Oedipus complex of the phallic stage. Character traits in adults such as fixation provide evidence for personality types that emerge from unresolved conflicts of a certain stage. What may have caused Steve’s personality type is conflicts of the Oedipus complex in response to inadequate affection from his mother.
5. Steve is fixated at phallic stage. The evidence is Steve’s sexually-based motivation towards women and unresolved issues of affection towards his mother. In the phallic stage, Steve had a deep affection for his mother and if affection was not returned unresolved tension would emerge causing a fixation of the stage. The father, a rival for affection was competition in Steve’s eyes.
6. Additional behaviors of those fixated in the phallic stage are unhappiness and emotionally immature from an unsuccessfully resolved Oedipus complex.

Theory Comparison Questions

1. Fromm’s relatedness can explain Steve’s relationships with women by his need to relate to others and to love in a productive fashion. Fromm emphasizes a social component in the relation to others whereas Freud concludes sex as the explicit drive.
2. Basic anxiety discussed by Horney can explain insecurities felt by Steve represented in his relationships with women. The insecurities, feeling unattractive or unloved, may have developed from a perceived threat of the environment from the inadequacies received by mother.
3. Melanie Klein differs from that of Freud in the conceptualization of the Oedipus complex as she views the relationship of parent and child as one influenced by object relation in the aim of human development. According to Klein, Steve did not ‘split’ the good and bad traits of his mother and therefore did not associate his traits as good or bad. This may have affected his relationships with women.
4. Rollo May’s types of love libido and manic can be used to describe Steve’s relationships with women. Libido: he is driven by a biological release of sexual tension. Manic: his relationships are great prior to having sex. They end when he no longer wants sex from them. He lacks esteem (agape) and intimate non-sexual (philia) relationships with women.