psychosexual development
in the classical psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud, the step-by-step growth of sexual life as it affects personality development. Freud posited that the impetus for psychosexual development stems from a single energy source, the libido, which is concentrated in different organs throughout infancy and helps produce the various psychosexual stages: the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency stage, and genital stage. Each stage gives rise to its own characteristic erotic activities (e.g., sucking and biting in the oral stage), and the early expressions may lead to “perverse” activities later in life, such as sadism, masochism, voyeurism, and exhibitionism. Moreover, the different stages leave their mark on the individual’s character and personality, especially if sexual development is arrested in a fixation at one particular
stage. Also called libidinal development.