Editing Sigmund Freud (section)

===Psychosexual development===
{{Main|Psychosexual development}}
Freud's theory of psychosexual development proposes that following on from the initial [[polymorphous perversity]] of infantile sexuality, the sexual "drives" pass through the distinct developmental phases of the [[oral stage|oral]], the [[anal stage|anal]], and the [[phallic stage|phallic]]. Though these phases then give way to a [[latency stage]] of reduced sexual interest and activity (from the age of five to puberty, approximately), they leave a "perverse" and bisexual residue which persists during the formation of [[genital stage|adult genital sexuality]]. Freud argued that [[neurosis]] and [[perversion]] could be explained in terms of fixation or regression to these phases whereas adult character and cultural creativity could achieve a [[Sublimation (psychology)|sublimation]] of their perverse residue.<ref>Mannoni 2015 [1971], pp. 93–97.</ref>

After Freud's later development of the theory of the [[Oedipus complex]] this normative developmental trajectory becomes formulated in terms of the child's renunciation of incestuous desires under the fantasised threat of (or fantasised fact of, in the case of the girl) [[castration complex|castration]].<ref>Gay 2006, pp. 515–18</ref> The "dissolution" of the Oedipus complex is then achieved when the child's rivalrous identification with the parental figure is transformed into the pacifying identifications of the [[Ego ideal]] which assume both similarity and difference and acknowledge the separateness and autonomy of the other.<ref>Cavell, Marcia ''The Psychoanalytic Mind'', Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press 1996, p. 225.</ref>

Freud hoped to prove that his model was universally valid and turned to ancient mythology and contemporary ethnography for comparative material arguing that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict.<ref>{{cite book|last=Paul|first=Robert A.|title=The Cambridge Companion to Freud|year=1991|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0-521-37779-9|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J4UNrJlLGjoC&pg=PA274|editor=James Neu |page=274|chapter=Freud's anthropology}}</ref>