Child Development Chapter 2 Psychoanalytic Theory o The oldest and most controversial of the theories of development The controversy stems from the provocative ideas of its originator the Viennese neurologist Sigmund Freud o The Structure of Personality Freud proposed that from birth the individual is endowed with biologically based sexual and aggressive instincts that unconsciously motivate everything humans think say or do throughout their lives The instincts are expressed in the form of Libido a form of energy which drives all thinking and behavior Libido is stores in the id a place in the mind that Freud called the reservoir of libido All of the activities of the id are unconscious thus we are all unaware of our instincts and their profound and virtually irresistible effects on our behavior Infants invest libido according to the Pleasure Principle an approach that demands instant gratification Infants usually find this gratification at their mother s breast however many mothers try to socialize their children to delay gratification and seek pleasure in more socially acceptable ways Freud believed that these demands promote the development of the Ego the component of personality that uses conscious perception and intelligence to find pleasure in a world where needs are not typically met on demand Because the ego recognizes the frustrations inherent in living in the real world it is said to function on the basis of the Reality Principle The third and final component of the personality the Superego emerges rather suddenly during the 5th or 6th year of life The superego is the seat of morality and has two distinct components The Conscience is a collection of beliefs attitudes and rules for behavior that function as an internal standard for the appropriateness of behavior The Ego Ideal is an internalized image of distinctly human form that the child and later the adult unconsciously strive to become The problem is that there is nothing necessarily ideal about the ego ideal its features may be positive or negative or both When the ego attempts to satisfy the id s insatiable needs it is destined to fail due to the difficulty of finding love and hate objects in society The ego s failure results in Unconscious Anxiety which undermines the ego s ability to function o Psychodynamics o Psychosexual Development Reversely if the ego does its job too well rules or ideals in the superego are violated resulting in Unconscious Guilt Freud suggested that while the ego is vulnerable to the ravages of guilt and anxiety it can fight back with Defense Mechanisms unconscious mental strategies that provide temporary relief from anxiety and guilt Freud believed that personality emerges gradually over the first five to six years of life in a progression of Psychosexual Stages of Development Each stage is defined by the presence of libido in a particular zone of the body Libido s presence creates an erogenous zone that is highly sensitive to sexual stimulation and a focus of pleasure Stages Oral Stage first 18 months of life pleasure is derived from variations of sucking behavior The stage ends when the infant is weaned from sucking to sipping The stage ends when the child is potty trained and the libido shifts to the genitals the child experiences pleasure in the act of defecation happens somewhere between the 4th and 5th years Phallic Stage Anal Stage Freud believed that emotional upheavals of the phallic stage are followed by massive repression of sexual and aggressive drives during middle childhood a stage he called Latency But latency is merely the calm before the storm known as the Genital stage Genital Stage the young adolescent experiences a rebirth of sexual and aggressive strivings and the return of unresolved conflicts from earlier stages Freud speculated that Trauma extreme experiences of anxiety during the first five years of life may cause the individual to be permanently vulnerable to psychological maladjustment Piaget s Cognitive Developmental Theory Focuses on how children develop knowledge of their world how they think and solve problems and how these cognitive processes change in a stage by stage progression from birth to maturity o The Active Nature of the Child Infants explore the active nature of their cognitive system by exploring every object within their reach Older children express this active quality in persistence in problem solving and intellectual curiosity Piaget assumed that children do not passively wait for other people to present problems to them they actively seek problems to solve o Mental Structures and Adaptation Uses the term Structure in two ways First Piaget Suggests that all aspects of the real world are structured entities For example in the world of an infant individual objects such as rattles blankets and their mothers face have structure This theory continues on throughout life when kids must arrange toys on the shelf and eventually solve math problems Second Piaget s second use of the term refers to Cognitive Structures the mental units that children use to represent reality to think about objects and events A child knows the world to the extent that he she has cognitive structures that match the structure of objects and events in the world Put simply cognitive structures are the way the child knows the world Adaptation is the process by which cognitive structures are applied to and are modified by the child s experiences Piaget identified two processes by which adaptation occurs assimilation and accommodation a child uses an existing cognitive structure to Assimilation interpret some experience o When a baby sees a rattle they will often assimilate it to things that make noise when shaken However the infant may also mistake other objects as toys that make noise when shaken Accommodation to conform to some new aspect of reality the child modifies an existing cognitive structure o When a baby is first given a rattle it is just a rattle to hold However once the baby has more experience with the rattle and realizes it makes noise she is likely going to distinguish between rattles that make noise and toys that don t Characterized by action oriented problem solving At the beginning of this stage the newborns cognitive organization is limited to a set of wired in reflexes such as startling and turning their heads with a stroke of the cheek As newborns actively touch taste and visually scan the world they develop what Piaget calls sensori motor schemas For
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