Freud's theories of psychosexual development

I don't agree at all with Freud's reasoning. I don't think you can categorise development into such compartments based on sexual impulses. Number one, the oral phase is seen as an early stage of the Oedipal complex (which I hold very little truck with). Why? Because a baby sucks on the mother's breast. I would have thought the nutritional (and survival) aspects of this act would hold more prevalence. Think about it, babies who didn't want to suckle would be a poor bet in evolutionary terms. And suckling goes back to the time of the dinosaurs with the first mammals. So in my opinion Freud's argument is flawed in this oral stage as he reasons that baby's do it because of a sexual need. However I think baby's do it because they are "programmed" to do it. So-called "oral fixation" behaviours are nothing more than behaviours, nail-biting is not a preoccupation with your mouth, it's trimming your nails using the nail clippers you're always carrying.

As for "Bowel movement and and the withholding of such movement" as being a gratifying behaviour I've a newsflash: baby's have no control over their sphinctor muscle for a long period of early life. They soil themselves because they can't help it. They learn to control it and withold the need to go because if you just defecate where you stand all the time you are going to introduce diseases into your living area. So being able to hold it and doing it where it's not near your food and relatives is a good thing. Yet again not just humans do this.

The phallic stage makes some sense to me as of course people are sexual creatures (I've yet to come across a case of full body mitosis in humans ) and as the genitals develop (not as dramatically as in puberty) obviously the child will recognise the feeling of touching them as being pleasurable. They are designed to be pleasurable after all.

Latency? I don't think all children just switch off and don't act to some extent sexually until they hit puberty. I know I didn't. I think it's more of a build up thing, it's always there in you but once you hit puberty and the hormones kick in it's like a dam bursting and it's all you can think about.

As for the genital stage, like the phallic stage it makes sense to me. As your body and body chemistry is changing you're going to enjoy what sexual experiences you have but I disagree that any problems at this stage are due to problems encountered in the early stages. Yes early experiences (I'm not just talking about trauma but less severe and indeed positive things) will influence it but the mind is a tricky thing and it can't be that simple in my opinion.