Human development refers to the physical, cognitive, and psychosocial development of humans throughout the lifespan. Physical development involves growth and changes in the body and brain, the senses, motor skills, and health and wellness. Cognitive development involves learning, attention, memory, language, thinking, reasoning, and creativity. Psychosocial development involves emotions, personality, and social relationships.
human developments are basically a series of age-related changes that happen over the course of a life span. People pass through different stages in a specific order and each stage builds on top of another and we develop capacities through those stages, built upon the previous stage.
Developmental phycologists strive to explain and describe the ways human grow, learn and act as they do and in order to understand how people think, their behavior and feelings throughout their lifespan, many different child development theories were given to explain various aspects of human development.
Theories of human development
• Nature versus nurture theory
In the olden days the theory was that people were either shaped by their environment
(nurture) OR shaped by their biology (nature). The debate of nature versus nurture has been going on for centuries, now we know that our physical characteristics like hair color, height, eye color, and certain diseases are direct results of the genes we inherit from our parents.
• Freud's Physchosexual Stages of Development
Freud was born on 6 may 1856, an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. He began his study of medicine in 1873 in university of Vienna. Freud’s work and theories have helped shape views of childhood, personality, memory, sexuality, and therapy.
In his theory of psychosexual development, he believed that phycological development in childhood goes through stages based upon a particular erogenous zone and called those stages psychosexual stages. If these psychosexual stages are completed successfully, the result is a healthy personality and if certain issues are not resolved at the appropriate stage, fixation can occur. Fixation means a persistent focus on an earlier psychosexual stage, the Freuds theory focused on the importance of personality development at childhood so if at a certain stage, fixation occurs than it could have a lasting effect into adulthood.
Frueds physchosexual stages of development are:
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1. Oral stage: ( 0 -1 age)
When it comes to oral, the part of the body that the libido is foucused on is the mouth. The infants primary source of interaction occurs through their mouth so the infant achieves gratification through oral activities such as feeding, thumb sucking and babbling
And because the infant is totally dependant on the parents or whoever is taking care of them for food so the infant develops a sense of trust and comfort through this oral stimulation. Now if fixation or conflict occurs in this stage the child becomes less dependant upon the caretaker, so frued believed that fixation at this stage could develop issues with depression and aggression so in their adulthood, an oral type of personality can be noticed in people that smoke or bite their nails, or people that over eat.
2. Anal stage: ( 1- 3 age)
In this stage, the part of the body that libido is focused on anus.
the primary focus is on in controlling the bladder and bowel movements so this can be consired as toilet training. At this stage, the child has to learn to control his or her bodily needs. Developing this control leads to a sense of accomplishment and independence. So parents who utilize praises and rewards for the child using the toilet are encouraging positive outcomes and inappropriate parental responses can result in negative outcomes. Now if any fixations occurs at this stage it can lead to problems as an adult like orderliness and messiness.
3. Phallic stage ( 3- 6 age)
The point of interest in this stage is the genital area.
At this stage, children begin to discover the differences between males and females and becomes aware of sexuality. Frued came up with two important terms in this stage, so he believed that boys begin to feel of wanting to possess the mother and replace the father and named this term the Oedipus complex and the same thing occurs with females or young girls towards their fathers which he termed the electra complex. If fixation occurs at this stage, it can transform into adulthood and cause sexual dysfunction if this isn’t resolved.
4. Latency stage: ( 6-puberty)
During the latent period, the point of interest are suppresses. The stage begins around the time that children enter into school and become more concerned with peer relationships, hobbies and other interests.
The latent periods is a time of exploration in which the sexual energy is still present, but its is directed into other areas such as intellectual pursuits and social interactions. This stage is important in the development of social and communication skills and self confidence
5. Genital stage: ( Adolescence-adulthood)
During the final stage of psychosexual development, the individual develops a strong sexual interest in the opposite sex. This stage begins during puberty but last throughtout the rest of a persons life.
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