phallic stage

n. In psychoanalysis, the phase of development, beginning about age 3, in which children begin to focus on their genitals as the main source of sensory pleasure. Most boys and girls want to put the pleasure they derive from manipulating their genitals together with their mother, a desire that leads to conflict with their father, whom they see as a rival for their mother's love. This typically leads to castration anxiety for boys, in which they project their hatred and desire to castrate the father onto the father and fear he will castrate them. Eventually boys try to become like their father so they can induce someone like their mother to marry them. Little girls envy their father's possession of a penis and feel wounded and inadequate, blame their mothers for not preventing their fathers from castrating them, and eventually seek to become like their mothers so they can marry a man and thus possess the power of their husband's penis. The anxiety resulting from these conflicts eventually leads children to repress overt sexuality and enter the latency stage of development.