23
Genital Stage
The genital stage is the final stage in Freud’s theory of psychosexual development and begins in puberty. During this stage, the teenager has overcome latency, made associations with one gender or the other, and now seeks out pleasure through sexual contact with others. The sexual contact sought has shifted from the opposite sex parent of the phallic stage (and overcoming this), and is now focused on opposite-sex people of similar age. The pleasure that they gain is now through actual physical stimulation of the genitals by the opposite sex.
