developmental psychology

right now i’m taking a course on ‘developmental psychology’ at the college general , penang, given by a priest, Fr. IH. it’s a two hours course for 4 days a week. first lesson was on 7 june. last lessons will be this coming friday.

what is developmental psychology? according to wikipedia :
Developmental psychology is the scientific study of age related behavioral changes which occur as a child grows up. This field examines change across a broad range of topics including: motor skills, problem solving abilities, conceptual understanding, acquisition of language, moral understanding, and identity formation.

first, fr. IH used sigmund freud’s theory, where we were told freud focus on psychosexual development. the stages, according to freud, are:
1. the oral stage
2. the anal stage
4. the phallic stage
5. the latency stage
7. the genital stage.

the phallic stage is quite interesting. learning about the ‘oedipius complex’ and ‘castration anxiety’ was eye opening. get to learn of the meaning of penis envy, and get to learn of things like young boys starting to develop sexual fantasy for mothers!

to read in detail of the stages, click here.

then we also learned of erik erikson’s theory. while freud focus on psychosexual stages of development, erikson focus on psychosocial stages of development.

we are now at the tail-end of learning erikson’s stages. after that, fr. IH will link these developmental psychology growth to our spiritual growth (4 lessons to go). and we have to sit for a test! either presentation form or oral form. naturally i’ll choose oral. i am not sure if i can do well in the test because all those ‘psycho-psycho’ terms can be so confusing at times! wish me luck anyway.