Sigmund Freud postulated that a person's actions arise from the desire to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Although most defining in one's early years, conflicts coming from this pleasure principle last a lifetime. Freudian psychoanalysis seeks significant childhood events and their attendant fantasies, wishes, and dreams. For Freud, the mind was intimately linked to past experience, both conscious and unconscious. Understanding the mental experiences a person has repressed is, therefore, the key to evaluating present function, along with determining behavioral effects caused by the admixture of sexual drive (libido) and aggression. At the core of Freudian theory: factors determining personality develop through oral, anal, and phallic phases in childhood; and through id, ego, and superego during later latency and adolescent periods

Psychosexual Stages of Development:

1. Oral stage (birth to about 18 months of age) - marked by libidinal gratification through the lips, mouth, and tongue.

2. Anal stage (about 18 months to age 3) - gratification is accomplished through the retention and passing of feces.

3. Phallic stage (age 3 to six) - the genitals become primary to libidinal drives; boys may develop Oedipus complex (child wants to replace his father as source of mother's affection) and girls may develop Electra complex (have sexual feelings toward father); note that Freud disagreed with the Electra complex - this term was coined by psychoanalysts later on.

4. Latency stage (age six to puberty) - libidinal drives are suppressed, and children tend to play with friends of the same sex.

5. Genital stage (puberty and on) - adolescents begin to feel sexual urges.

The id (representing the effects of libido and aggression), the ego (standing for self-identity), and the superego (otherwise termed conscience) dominate during the latency period and adolescence. These forces are shaped by education and socialization with significant others. Freudian psychoanalysis aims to enable the client to discover unconscious conflicts, with the idea that once they have been revealed, such conflicts respond to rational approaches. In this way, neurotic behaviors may be controlled and abated.