Which term is the process of being stuck at a psychosexual development stage?

• A. Id
• B. Libido
• C. Fixation
• D. Narcissistic personality disorder

Answer: (C)

Fixation is the idea that a person can become stuck at a particular psychosexual development stage. In Freud’s theory, as a child moves through stages—oral, anal, phallic, latency, and genital—their libidinal energy is focused on different areas. If conflicts at a stage aren’t resolved, or if a child is either overindulged or deprived, that energy can stay invested there. The result is certain patterns of behavior that reflect the stage where the person remains fixated. For example, an oral fixation might show up as reliance on oral comforts like smoking, overeating, or dependency; an anal fixation might manifest as extreme neatness or rigidity, or conversely, messiness and defiance, depending on how toilet training was handled.

Id refers to the primitive, instinctual part of the mind driven by immediate gratification, not the mechanism of getting stuck at a stage. Libido is the energy behind psychosexual development, not the process of fixation itself. Narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical condition involving grandiosity and a lack of empathy, not the developmental mechanism of fixation.