What Psychosexual stage?

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Jedi_Knight

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I have a question about the following case file.
What would Joker's psychosexual stage be?



Case Study Assignment: Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis

Joker is on a date imagining the rest of the evening. The restaurant they are eating at is one of those little Italian places with red-and-white checkered tablecloths and lighted candles. A violin player paces around the tables while he plays romantic music. Joker fantasizes that he and his date will end up in his apartment for a night of passion.

Joker is 28, single, a bachelor by choice, but his friends worry about his happiness. They wonder if Joker is unable to form a long-term relationship, that he has a fear of commitment and an addiction to sex and the passion that marks the beginning of relationships. And, they wonder whether Joker's strained relationship with his mother is at least partly to blame for his behavior. Joker's mother, while caring for his physical needs, was not openly affectionate and did not give Joker the physical affection and loving interaction he craved. They wonder if his anger toward her and her negligent behavior toward Joker is being manifested as anger toward women in general.

Joker has been a flirt ever since puberty. In high school, he had a reputation for his superficiality. Girls were attracted to him; he was handsome and spent a lot of time and money on his appearance. But to his friends, however, Joker secretly feared that he was unattractive, so he did whatever he could to improve his looks.

The girls he asked out always had a good time on their dates, but it soon became known that he would always pressure his dates for sex, and, in many cases, tell them that he loved them to convince them to have sex. He was also rumored to have made one girl pregnant and then claimed that it was not his child. To his close male friends, he said that she was not going to tie him down, that "there were too many women and not enough time."

This pattern of relationships continued during college. He would date women, have sex with them a few times, and then break off the relationship. He estimated that by the time he was 21, he had had sex with about eight dozen women. He bragged about this among his male friends.

After college, and through the present time, Joker also continued to form relationships with women that were based on sexual attraction and nothing more substantial. One by one, he watched his male friends settle down and commit to one woman. Every time this happened, he would express astonishment and disbelief, stating that his friends were being duped and that no one would make him live with one woman for the rest of his life. When women agreed to go out with him or go to bed with him, Joker felt attractive and no one was going to take that away from him. In fact, Joker secretly feared that no woman would find him attractive enough to marry. He believed that these women went out with him initially to get a free meal and would soon want to break up with him when someone better came around. So he broke up with them first.

His friends had believed that Joker's latest conquest, Diane, would be the one he would marry. She seemed to be all that any man could hope for. She was pretty, smart, and caring and had a

good sense of humor. Joker had been dating her for longer than he normally dated women, and his friends thought that he was finally growing up and settling down. As it turns out, the relationship lasted longer than usual because she was reluctant to have sex with him. She finally did after a couple of months when she was convinced that Joker really loved her and was not just using her for sex. Unfortunately, Diane should have trusted her initial instincts. Joker broke up with her after they had sex on three different occasions.

His present date was a woman he met at the gym he worked out at. She was very attractive, with a great body. He used to date women he met at work, but after someone accused him of sexual harassment, he decided to no longer date women from work. He has angered by the specific accusation and the hype associated with sexual harassment in general. A man just couldn't follow his instincts any more without the possibility of losing his job. At least he could still meet women at other places.

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This was my cursory review of the case.
Any critique welcome:

Case Study: Joker

  1. How would the Freudian perspective explain Joker’s relationship with women?

    According to the case file, Joker has had a string of failed relationships with women. His relationship with his mother is also strained and she did not provide emotional care towards him.

    Joker may be suffering from a form of arrested development. Freud explains a similar case in his Lectures when he discusses two young girls. Girl A and Girl B experienced sexual pleasure together as children. Girl A matured and later married as a young woman, while Girl B was unable to form lasting relationships because she was unable to resolve what happened between her and Girl A as a child. Freud explained that until this childhood event was resolved, Girl B would be unable to marry. In Joker’s case, he is unable or unwilling to form lasting romantic relationships. The strained relationship with his mother may indicate that the Oedipus complex has not fully resolved but more information would be needed about his father and family structure to explore that further.


  2. Which system or systems (Ego-Id-Superego) of personality is most involved? How?

    In all people, the Id, Ego and Super Ego operates to maintain function, pleasure and survival. In Joker’s case, the Id is in the driver’s seat for the most part. The Id only cares about primal instincts such as pleasure. In Joker’s case, he often has sex with women 3 times and then breaks up with them, seeking a new partner. The Ego, which regulates the Id and acts as a mediator between the world and the Id, has played a role in keeping Joker from losing his job: After a coworker complained of sexual harassment, he grudgingly stopped picking up women at work.

    Of noted interest is the apparent lack of guilt from the Super Ego.


  3. Explain and support the different levels of consciousness on Joker's behavior?

    Joker’s unconscious desires for pleasure are the motivating factor for his sexual conquests of women. In his dreams, he likely has very sexual dreams because they bypass the filter of the ego.


  4. Explain and support which of Freud's personality types (Oral-Anal-Phallic-Latent-Genital) does Joker display?

    Joker’s behavior displays signs of the genital psychosexual stage of development. He pursues sexual relationships with women but is unable to develop and maintain intimate relationships in the form of a marriage and family.

    Personal comments: In order to psycho analyze Joker, a trained analyst would need to analyze his dreams. More information is needed about his familial background to see how he developed with the Oedipus complex.
 
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