I became the person I am today because of my past, and all the influences that have shaped me, molded me, and impacted my personality and sense of self. Of course, my genetic history is also tied into who I am, impacting my physiological development, which in turn shapes how others see me and respond to me. In my case, I was adopted and have no knowledge of my birth parents. Occasionally I have considered finding out who they were but have yet to take that step; perhaps one day I will. Without knowing my biological parents, I do not know my genetic history as well as I could. I also do not know the conditions that impacted my mother during my prenatal development. As soon as I was adopted, my parents embraced me and held me as if I was one of their own. They adopted one other child, my sister, who is two years younger than me. We had a happy childhood, not without its ups and downs but certainly less stressful than the childhoods some of my friends had. My parents are still married after all these years, and are role models for a successful relationship. I have yet to find the person I want to spend the rest of my life with and am actually unsure if marriage and parenthood are in the cards for me. Early childhood development is a critical stage, even if we do not even have strong memories of the period from infancy to preschool. Freud claimed that between the ages of one and three we go through the oral stage: evident in the ways babies suck things incessantly: their pacifiers, fingers, or any object that happens to be in front of them. According to Freud, infants whose needs are not adequately met at this stage, for whatever reason, may develop oral fixations later in life (McLeod, 2017). Examples of oral fixations might include smoking, nail biting or overeating. For example, if the child was scolded or yelled at any time they sucked on something, they might not have had their oral needs met, internalizing those needs rather than fulfilling them in a natural progression. I do not have any oral fixations that I am aware of, and so I can assume that the first few years of my life were spent pleasurably sucking on things before I had developed the ability to speak.

Piaget proposed that during the first few years of life we were not necessarily orally orientated, but simply object oriented. This stage of development Piaget called the sensorimotor stage (“Piaget Stages of Development,” n.d.). Babies do experiment with what is directly in front of them, and are not...

Erikson proposed a different approach, focusing more on social interactions and how they impact our psychological development, our beliefs, attitudes, and sense of self. The first few years of life are characterized by the development of trust, or mistrust as the case may be depending on environmental cues and how the child interprets those cues. Appropriate responses from caregivers during these early years will engender a sense of trust of others that may last a lifetime. A mother who was responsive to my crying, for instance, leads me to believe that when I need something, I will receive whatever it is I need in due time. While I may not know exactly what I went through for the first two years of my life, based on my ability to trust others and my lack of oral fixations, I would say that I progressed through this stage easily. My communications skills have always been strong and I have never struggled with issues like trust.
However, I can be a little controlling and tight with money sometimes. I thought this was due to the way my parents raised me, to always keep my room clean and to be frugal in all matters. Yet Freud might have suggested the possibility of an anal fixation. During the anal stage of psychosexual development, the child is being potty trained. Potty training that is stressful can lead to anal fixations, according to Freud, and anal fixations can manifest as being overly neat, overly punctual, and overly controlling. I have learned to use these tendencies in my favor: keeping a clean house and being on time for my appointments are, I believe, positive qualities. Yet I have been told to loosen up and lighten up, and that might be because I can be a little too fixated on control. Erikson suggested that this same stage in psychosocial terms would have been when I learned to develop a sense of personal autonomy: testing my boundaries, asserting myself, becoming independent. There might have indeed been some issues at this stage of my early childhood, given that I do tend to be overly cautious in my affairs and afraid to take risks. If my parents tended towards being overprotective, which they did, then it would certainly explain why I tend to take fewer risks than some of my friends. The inability to take risks freely parallels the need I have to control everything. I want to know the outcome before taking action, which sometimes paralyzes me. I am afraid to do the wrong thing, but I also know that…