Editing Psychosexual development (section)

== Background ==
[[File:Sigmund Freud, by Max Halberstadt (cropped).jpg|thumb|200px|right| [[Sigmund Freud]], [[Wiktionary:circa|c.]]&nbsp;1921]]

[[Sigmund Freud]] (1856–1939) observed that during the predictable stages of early childhood development, the child's behavior is oriented towards certain parts of their body, for example the mouth during [[breast-feeding]] or the [[Human anus|anus]] during toilet-training. In psychoanalysis, the adult [[neurosis]] (functional mental disorder) is thought to be rooted in fixations or conflicts encountered during the developmental stages of childhood sexuality. According to Freud, human beings are born "[[Polymorphous perversity|polymorphous perverse]]": infants can derive sexual pleasure from any part of their bodies and any object. Over time the socialization process channels the (originally non-specific) [[libido]] into its more fixed mature forms.<ref name="myre396">Myre, Sim (1974) ''Guide to Psychiatry'', 3rd ed. Churchill Livingstone:Edinburgh and London, p. 396</ref> Given the predictable timeline of childhood behavior, he proposed "libido development" as a model of normal childhood sexual development, wherein the child progresses through five psychosexual stages{{spaced ndash}}the oral; the anal; the phallic; the latent; and the genital{{spaced ndash}}in which the source pleasure is in a different [[erogenous zone]].