The impact of psychosexual growth on marriage and religious life

Michael Cavanagh, PhD

Psychosexual development is a critically important area of human growth, whether a person enters the priesthood or religious life, marriage or remains single. Both research and everyday observation indicate that a large percentage of problems in religious life and in marriage can be traced to faulty psychosexual growth. Sexual phobias on the part of the family and the church are major causes of such mal-development. Four rational fears have existed regarding sexuality: The fear of perversion, pregnancy, venereal disease and sin. These fears have been fed by ignorance, along with social and religious myths, which caused them to mushroom for many into phobias (i.e. irrational fears) that significantly impair normal and healthy maturation.

Consequently it is important that Christian educators (including parents, teachers, youth ministers, and religious formation directors) develop an academic understanding, an emotional acceptance, and a moral appreciation of the elements of healthy psychosexual development.

Nature of psychosexual development

Healthy psychosexual development includes four dimensions:

1 Cognitive dimension

Seeing or thinking of one’s body, gender and growth producing sexual behaviors in a positive attitude. This is where the attitudes are created. Sex is bad, it is vulgar, it is shameful etc.

2 Emotional dimension

Feeling comfortable, confident, and competent with one’s body and sexuality and with the bodies and sexuality of the opposite sex.

3 Social dimension

Relating with the same sex and opposite sex in ways that are unselfconscious, open and potentially mutually fulfilling.

4 Moral dimension

Valuing the ways of allowing and encouraging behaviors necessary for ongoing sexual growth, thus preventing the harmful expression of one’s sexuality

In stunted or unhealthy growth, these four qualities would be absent or developed in a negative direction.

Sexual learning and sexual expression begin at the moment of birth and continue throughout the life cycle. To become psychosexually mature, a person must pass through a series of stages and phases, each comprising developmental tasks that are normal and natural. Each stage must be learned and successfully completed before progression to the next step is possible. People have three choices:

1 To progress through these stages at the appropriate time
2 To progress in a stunted, delayed fashion
3 To fixate at a particular step and not progress beyond it



Stage 1:Childhood sexuality

This stage usually lasts from birth to late childhood. Of the three stages, this is the most important, because it sets the foundation and theme for the remaining ones. This comprises three phases.

Phase 1: Sexual unawareness

Infants and very young children are not yet attuned cognitively or emotionally to their sexuality or the sexuality of others. They are dealt with according to society’s definition of how boys or girls should be treated, they may rub their genitals to experience pleasure, but they do not have thoughts, feelings, or experience of an explicitly sexual nature. Their sexual identity is very weak causing them to believe, for example that they can become the opposite sex simply by dressing like opposite sexed people. Whether they progress through this phase or remain in it for a prolonged period of time depends largely on their parent’s attitude towards sexuality. Because both male and female infants have the capacity to masturbate to orgasm within the first year of life, parents who react comfortable to their baby’s gender and masturbatory behavior create an environment conducive to further development . Parents who react negatively, wanting their child to remain innocent, pure, and untarnished may cause the child to fixate at this phase for a prolonged period, even for a life time.

Adults who have fixated at this phase possess a weak psychosexuality. They experience and enjoy relatively few, if any, sexual thoughts, fantasies, feelings, or behaviors. Even when they date, marry and have children, they do so as basically asexual people, with a significant void in their personal life as well as in their love and social relationships. Religious candidates who are fixated at this stage are often viewed as highly promising because they have no problems with chastity or celibacy. This view, however, reflects a serious misunderstanding of the nature of psychosexual development and integration. It confuses asexuality with sexual maturity.

Phase 2 : Sexual awakening

In healthy development, this phase typically covers the age spam of approximately 3 to 7 years. During this phase, children gradually notice their bodies are different from those of their opposite-sexed parents and siblings, and they become fascinated with their own bodies and those of others.

At this phase, children like to look at their bodies in the mirror and run around naked; both because it feels good and because it evokes a variety of reactions from others. They attempt to inspect the bodies of others and discuss bodily functions. Soon they ask where babies come from, acquire a sexual vocabulary, and repeat sexual jokes that they usually don’t understand. Masturbation increases in this phase, especially during periods of tension and boredom. It is also at this time that sex play with same-sexed and opposite-sexed siblings and peers begins. At first this play is blatant, but because of parental disapproval it soon becomes disguised in games such as ‘doctor’, ‘wrestling’, etc. Interest in sexual material in books, pictures, and television programs also begins and expands.

Because of rapidly increasing cognitive development, children in this phase are often seismographically sensitive to the reactions of their parents, siblings and other adults. Parents who’s typical reactions consist of disgust or shock are likely to create an environment that causes the child to regress to and fixate at phase one. Parents who typically react calmly and comfortably create an environment that allows the child to develop psychosexually, and at the same time distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate behaviors.

Fixation occurs at this stage when the child is not experiencing sufficient success, pleasure, or excitement in nonsexual areas. The child learns that the only or the easiest way to feel good and reduce tension is to behave sexually. Adults who have fixated at this phase tend to feel inadequate, perceiving the whole area of psychosexual relationships as threatening because it is un-chartered. If these individuals do participate in sexual behaviors, it is likely to be in a tentative, embarrassed manner. Adults who strongly fixated at this phase may be more sexually interested in children and/or same sexed individuals, and their contacts tend to be more experimental and short-term than sharing and lasting.

Phase 3: Sexual surreptitiousness

Because the sexual behaviors common to the previous phase raise anxiety in most adults, at least in our culture, children learn that it is better to go “underground” with their sexual development in late childhood. They feign disinterest in sex in general and in the opposite sex in particular. This causes their parents to relax and rest assured that their children have finally outgrown their “silly stage”. In fact, however, nothing could be further from the truth. Sexual thoughts, feelings and behavior are rapidly increasing. This can include heightened interest in sexual material, masturbation, sibling sex play and same-sexed behaviors, all of which can be normal at this phase of development.

In healthy development, children graduate from this phase after a couple of years and enter adolescent sexuality. In less healthy development, the child keeps his or her sexual self hidden for a longer period of time, possibly remaining in this phase throughout life. Adults who have fixated at this stage are secretly sexual; that is, they think, feel, and may act sexually, but they are afraid to let anyone, including their friends or spouse, know the extent of their sexuality.

As a result, the sexuality of these people can be problematic. Because they have kept their sexuality secret, they are often unaware that their sexual fantasies, feelings and acts are normal. Consequently, they create pernicious myths regarding themselves (e.g. I must be a pervert) that cause them to indulge in self-recrimination and to behave secretly and defensively. Whatever life-style these people choose, intimacy will be a significant problem because they live in dread that their sexuality will be discovered, causing them great shame and rejection.


Stage 2: Adolescent Sexuality

This stage generally spans the ages from 13 to 20 years old. It is important because it bridges the gap between childhood and adult sexuality. During this stage one of four events will occur:

1. The positive learning of childhood will be significantly reinforced
2. The positive learning will be modified or outweighed by new
negative experiences
3. The negative learning of childhood will be reinforced
4. The negative learning will be modified or outweighed by new
positive ones.

This stage also has three phases.

Phase1: Sexual Fantasy

In early adolescence, the random, generally disconnected sexual thoughts and feelings of childhood begin to weave themselves into thematic fantasies. In these fantasies, adolescents imagine themselves to be in sexual and romantic situations with real or imagined people. The purpose of these fantasies are: to integrate the intellect and emotions with genital sexuality so that eventually, all three dimensions function in unison ; to move the adolescent away from solitary sex toward a more socially oriented sexuality; and to provide an opportunity to rehearse sexual and romantic behaviors without having to appear foolish or be rejected. Adolescents, who lack the psychological competencies (self-esteem, self-confidence) to begin relating to the opposite sex in reality, or whose home environment subtly or explicitly discourages the beginning of heterosexual relationships, will likely fixate at this level. Adults who have fixated at this phase tend to limit their sexual lives to the realm of fantasy or to derive more pleasure from fantasy than they do from actual relationships. Moreover, since their real relationships cannot match their idyllic, fantasized ones, they often experience disappointment and resentment in actual relationships.

Phase 2: Sexual preoccupation

Middle adolescence is a time of being highly distracted and absorbed by sexuality. At this phase, adolescents become increasingly preoccupied with sexually related physical changes that are taking place and with sexual feelings that seem to appear from nowhere and for no reason. They masturbate with more frequency and intensity now than at any previous phase. They are preoccupied with sex related issues, such as sexually oriented books, magazines, or television programs, and with clothes, music, dates and dances. Adults typically view adolescents at this stage as “boy crazy” or “silly” and in anti sexual families, they are viewed as “sick”

As disconcerting as this phase is to many adults, it is an important one because “sexual saturation” eventually allows these adolescents to calm down and establish a sense of equilibrium as they begin to prepare for careers and/or college and life commitments.
Adolescents who fixate at this phase do so because they lack psychological competencies to graduate to the next phase of dating or because possessive parents directly or indirectly discourage dating. Adults who have fixated at this phase are often preoccupied with sex, both in their private and social lives. Sex seems to be a continual frame of reference and prevents them from recognizing and appreciating equally important needs and values in themselves and others. In dating and marriage, these people focus on and over value the sexual aspects of the relationship. In religious life they are either in a chronic state of tension caused by the conflict between their heightened sexuality and their vow of celibacy or they permit themselves sexual expression, which often cause guilt , role confusion and interpersonal tension within the religious community and with the people with whom they are involved.

Phase 3: Superficial Sexual Relating

During the adolescence, boys and girls spend increasingly more time together, and group dating evolves into dating as a couple. Simply enjoying each other’s company quickly grows in to hand-holding, kissing, light petting, heavy petting, and possibly sexual intercourse. Sexual relating during this phase is primarily experimental, self centered, and mixed with other needs and emotions. It is experimental in that adolescents are trying new roles and behaviors to see what works and what doesn’t. It is self centered in that the focus is on one’s own sexual and/or emotional gratification. Most behavior that appears to be altruistic is actually of an “I’ll scratch you back if you scratch mine” variety. Sexual relating is complicated in that, in addition to the need to be close and express affection, other equally strong, if not stronger, needs and emotions exist. These include the need to be in control, to be superior to be independent or dependent, to acquire esteem, to be powerful, to get one’s own way, and to be desired, and feelings such as suspiciousness, resentment, jealousy, guilt, confusion and ambivalence. It is because of these strong and often conflicting emotions that adolescent romantic relationships are often marked by instability and turmoil.
Adolescents who fixate at this stage do so mostly because they fear progressing to the next phase, which entails a closer and more intense kind of interaction. Adults who have fixated at this phase generally relate to opposite sexed people in markedly superficial, self centered, ambivalent or conflicting ways, and they turn to be overly dependent on parental affirmation, support, and values.

Stage 3: Adult Sexuality

This stage begins at approximately twenty years of age and is lifelong. In healthy development it is during this stage that people become psychosexually more confident, altruistic, and integrated. This stage has two phases.

Phase 1: Psychosexual Mutuality

This phase marks the passage from viewing heterosexual relationships as instruments of attaining affirmation and gratification to , viewing them as opportunities to express and share, care, trust, and affection. In healthy development, young adults learn a good deal about themselves as they experience relationships of various depths. They learn what they need and don’t need in a relationship, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and what their negotiable and nonnegotiable values are. They learn to walk a sensible path between intimacy and vulnerability, self centeredness and self-denial, affection and possessiveness, reality and romance. They also learn the beauty and the tension involved in sharing their life-space with another person.
Young adult also learn to temper their expectations, to compromise, and to realize that there are other, equally valid ways of perceiving the same reality. They learn to view interpersonal honesty as a gift rather than a threat; to respect their partner’s individuality, to be sensitive, tender, and compassionate; and to become a source of support and joy.
This phase is important because whatever life style a person chooses, the confidence and qualities that are acquired during this period are necessary for effective and mutually fulfilling interpersonal relationships. Young adults who fixate at this phase do so because they lack the overall psychosocial competencies necessary to complete these developmental learning successfully.
Adults who are fixated at this phase may be capable of relating to others superficially. But when it comes to deeper, more intimate, compassionate, and warm and affection levels, they do not relate well. They are in a psychological straitjacket that, depending on the dynamics of the situation, they view as proper and appropriately protective or as constraining and stunting. In either case, they live only partial lives.

Phase 2: Psychosexual Integration

This period begins at the end of young adulthood (approximately 30 years of age) and in healthy development continues until death. During this time, psychosexual needs gradually assume their place among other, equally important values. Depending on a person’s life commitment, psychosexual needs share priorities with earning a living and career advancement, parenthood, friendships, avocations, apostolate, community and spiritual pursuits.

Whatever life-style people choose, their psychosexual dimension embroiders the total fabric of their life and significantly beautifies it. It is well balanced with the other dimensions: it is neither predominant nor less important than any other.