... suggested that conflict between personality structures creates 'ego defences', leading to personality characteristics. These include intellectualism (thinking about threats in ways that allow emotion to be eliminated), denial (refusing to accept the existence of a threat), projection (attributing undesirable impulses or characteristics to others), repression (keeping troublesome emotions out of conscious awareness) and displacement (unconsciously transferring impulses from a threatening object to a less threatening one). Freud described early personality development in terms of five psychosexual stages. In each stage the child's energy or libido is focused on a different body region. The first being the oral stage (0-18months) where satisfaction is from eating, sucking etc. In the anal stage (18-36months) the child is interested in and gains satisfaction from the anal region. The phallic stage (3-6 years) is where the genitals become the source of satisfaction. In the latency stage (6years - puberty) boys and girls spend little time ...

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