MODES OF PSYCHOSEXUAL FIXATION

CHILDHOOD SEXUALITY

Sexual unawareness

Adults who have fixated at this phase possess a weak psychosexuality. They experience and enjoy relatively few, if any, sexual thoughts, fantasies, feeling, 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 life and social relationships. Relegious candidates who are fixated at this stage are often viewed as highly promising because they have no problems with chastity or celebacy.This view, however, reflects a serious misunderstanding of the nature of psychosexual development and integration. It confuses sexuality with sexual maturity.

Sexual awakening

Adults who have fixated at this phase tend to feel inadequate, perceiving the whole area of psychosexual relationships as threatening because it is unchartered. If these individuals do participate in sexual behaviors, it is likely to be in tentative, embarrassed manner. Adults who strongly fixate 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.

Sexual Surreptitiousness

Adults who have fixated at this stage are secretly sexual: 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.


ADOLESCENT SEXUALITY

Sexual Fantasy

Adults who have fixated at this phase tend to limit their sexual life to the realm of fantasy or to derive more pleasure form fantasy than they do from actual relationships. Moreover, since their real relationships cannot catch their idyllic, fantasized ones, they often experience disappointment and resentment in actual relationships.

Sexual preoccupation

Adults who have fixated at his 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 overvalue the sexual aspects of the relationship. In religious life, they are either in a chronic state of tensions caused by the conflict between their heightened sexuality and their vow of celibacy , or they permit themselves, sexual expression which often causes guilt, role confusion, and interpersonal tensions within the religious community and with the people with whom they are involved.

Superficial Sexual Relating

Adults who have fixated at this phase generally drawn to opposite-sexed people in markedly superficial , self centered, ambivalent, or conflicting ways; and they tend to be overly dependent on parental affirmation, support and values.


ADULT SEXUALITY


Psychosexual Mutuality

Adults who are fixated at this phase may be capable of relating to others superficially. But when it comes to deeper more intimate compassionate levels, they do not relate well. They are in a psychological straightjacket that , depending on the dynamics of the situation, thay view as proper and appropriately protective, or as constraining and stunting. In either case, they live only partial lives.