psychosexual stage

n. Any of the five stages of development hypothesized by Sigmund Freud as part of his psychoanalytic theory. These include the oral stage, in which infants are focused on oral pleasure and in which the ego or sense of self and real world first develop; the anal stage, in which the child is focused on pleasure in the bowels and rectum and in which ego gains strength and the development of superego or morality begins; the phallic stage, in which the center of pleasure shifts to either the penis or the clitoris and children go through an immense conflict over love and sexuality whose resolution leads to the temporary repression of overt sexuality and thus entry into the latency period, in which sexual pleasure is indirect and the child usually seeks to emulate the same-sex parent; and finally the genital stage, in which puberty overcomes the repression of sexuality and the person must include mature sexual expression in his or her ideas of who he/she is and learn to love and work in ways culturally appropriate to his/her sex.