Thursday, May 15, 2008

Theoretical and practical considerations

The following are some theoretical and practical considerations that pertain to a helpful appreciation of psychosexual development.

1. Progressing through developmental stages is analogous to climbing the rungs of a ladder in two ways. First, each rung must be experienced, not merely intellectually acknowledged and understood. Second, just as one cannot skip the first twenty rungs of a ladder and expect to reach the top, one cannot skip the first seven phases of psychosexual development and expect to reach the final phase of sexual integration.

2. Healthy psychosexual development does not occur in a vacuum. It can only happen when the overall psychosocial development of the person is healthy. People who successfully progress through the stages must have learned at least adequate personal competencies of self esteem, self-knowledge, self-confidence, self –direction, self-discipline, and interpersonal competencies, including the ability to feel comfortable with people of both sexes, to be assertive, to be sensitive , to communicate effectively and to share on an emotional level. In addition, the environment (family, society, and church/religion) must allow if not encouraged the individual to take the steps necessary to grow in to a healthy sexual human being. A person may possess relatively good psychosocial competencies but lack the psychological permission necessary to participate in healthy psychosexual development because of the family’s or church’s negative sexual attitudes. One may also learn healthy sexual attitudes from the family and the church, but fail to participate satisfactorily in a psychosexual development because of inadequate psychosocial competencies. In either case, psychosexual stunting and problems will necessarily occur until there is a change in the inhibiting factors.

3. Psychosexual development rarely follows a smooth and even course. A person’s development can overlap phases, progress rapidly, regress to an earlier phase, and remain on a plateau for periods of time. In normal development such fluctuations are expected , but they remain within tolarable limits. In problematic development, fluctuations can be dramatic, especially in the direction of regression to early childhood phases.

4. A large number of people who were raised in families and religions with fearful or negative attitudes towards sexuality remain fixated at the child or adolescent stages of development, either forever or for a large portion of their lives. As difficult as it is for some people to understand, a certain percentage of people remain fixated at the first phase of development. They remain virtually nonsexual for their entire lives, even though they may marry and have large families.

5. Although delayed psychosexual development is theoretically better than remaining fixated at earlier phases, it often causes significant problems. Psychosexual development is intricately connected with all other areas of personality: intellectual (especially with regard to perceiving oneself and life in general ) emotional, social and moral. When adults are going through “catch up growth” that is, when their lagging psychosexual development is attempting to or has finally caught up with their chronological age, significant changes in personality can occur. For example , many marital crises and vocational crises are the result of a person finally growing psychosexually from childhood to adolescence or from adolescent in to adulthood. The crisis is caused by the fact that the person may be growing away from a commitment and from the people who were sharing it (e.g. Spouse and children or fellow religious and the religious community at large.) This type of problem almost inevitably arises when people who are at the childhood or adolescent stages of development make what appear to be life commitments. The problem also raises a complex moral question, namely: is it more moral to remain in these commitments (marriage, priesthood, religious life) repressing one’s psychosexuality and therefore, overall growth, for the sake of remaining faithful to vows and not distressing other people, or it more moral to relinquish the commitment as constructively as possible and continue to grow into a fuller person?

6. A number of paradoxes arise in the attitudes of many Christians with regard to psychosexual development. The following are some common ones: Although Christian educators typically accept as valid, the concept of developmental stages and experiences in all other areas of human growth (e.g. Erikson’s stages of psychological development, Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, Kohlberg’s stages of moral development, and Fowler’s stages of faith development) many are unmindful of or resistant to the concept of experiential stages in psychosexual development. In other words, they exempt psychosexual development from the principles that pertain to all other areas of human growth. Christian educators often stop being educators when the subject of sexuality enters the picture. The same parent, teacher, or formation director who when teaching religion eagerly passes on information, invites discussion, reduces fear of taking risks, rewards efforts, and recognizes the importance of trial-and-error and experiential learning is often the same person, who not only fails to apply these learning principles in the areas of sexuality but often reverses them. The sexual behaviors that Christians are most concerned about (sexual excess and abuses, promiscuity, compulsive masturbation, unwanted pregnancy, unfaithfulness, perversion) are far more likely to occur as result of stunted or arrested psychosexual development than they are from healthy, on going sexual development.

7.Nothing in the psychological understanding of psychosexual development excludes Christian morality or diminishes its importance. But for Christian morality to be helpful and credible, it must recognize at least three points.

First, the criteria used to judge the morality of adult sexual behavior cannot be applied to developmental sexual behavior. Analogously, we would not judge an infant guilty of gluttony and sloth on the basis of its eating and sleeping for the better part of each day. We recognize that these behaviors are necessary for healthy development. If , however, an adult eats and sleeps all day, a moral issue may be considered.

Second, childhood and adolescence are psychological stages far more than they are chronological ranges. A thirty –year – old man or a fifty year –old woman through no fault of his or her own may be going through delayed psychosexual development, which may take years to complete. Although these people are chronologically adults, their sexual behavior is still developmental and therefore, should be judged accordingly.

Third, Christian morality would do better to focus more on the virtues of care, honesty, respect, justice, freedom, and love and less on the moral significance of specific sexual behaviors. As children, adolescents, and adults develop these Christian qualities , their behavior, including their sexual behavior will become more Christian. To focus negatively on specific sexual behaviors is theologically tenuous and serves only to discourage healthy development. Moreover, it can seriously and needlessly damage self-esteem, which can cause more serious moral problems than the specific sexual behaviors themselves.

8.What can people who are married or in religious life do if they realize that they are psychosexually stunted or disturbed ? No answer to this question can be universally applied. A person may need no outside help if he or she recognizes what further thoughts, feelings, and acts need to be experienced to achieve sexual integration; possesses the psychosocial competencies to participate in that learning and experience; and has a moral outlook that allows for those behaviors. If, on the other hand , one or more of those three factors are absent, the person may need psychological help, theological direction, or a combination of the two, in order to continue along his or her path toward becoming a fuller person and therefore, a more effective Christian.

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