Freud developed his psychological theory that every person’s psychosocial development is motivated by instinctual sexual drives initially activated in infancy. These drives typically result in conflict situations in our youth that get repressed in our subconscious and initiates an inner psychody

An infant starts out organizing her world by trial and error. She reacts to people and situations making observations and interpretations. Because of her limited life experience she is a much better observer than she is an interpreter. You can imagine all the data that comes in and the infant has to sift, sort and make sense of it. We draw our own unique conclusions and begin to make up rules about "the way things are." Actions which bring us satisfaction or a "payoff" are continued and reinforced. Those which don't are usually dropped. From day one the infant's most important social goal is to belong and be significant. As a social being, she is trying to find her place as she sees it. She often has faulty logic as to how to accomplish this and has mistaken goals which bring her discouragement. The "rules" she forms are based on limited information and absolutes, like "never," "always," and "only." When experience contradicts the rules, the rule, rather than the experience, prevails. Eventually this pattern, based on "private logic" rather than empirical evidence, becomes the guide for the individual's method of viewing herself, her world, and of dealing with all situations.

Children think these misbehaviors will satisfy their emotional goal to belong. They are half right. For example, the child thinks, "I belong if Mother is busy with me," and proceeds to interrupt Mom repeatedly while she is on the phone. Mom provides plenty of attention, but it's all negative: "I told you not to bother me while I'm on the phone! Go to your room." So paradoxically, the belonging sought by the child is lost. The rejection, discouragement and confusion, which are obvious to the child, begin to have a cyclic discouraging effect. If children fail to acquire belonging through socially useful, cooperative, contributing actions, they settle for belonging at any price - belonging by being the best at being the worst. Discouraged children misbehave (either by attempts to get attention, power, revenge, or by giving up), because they have lost the courage to find their place by doing the useful thing. Unfortunately, they choose a useless behavior - that is, children do things which they think will achieve their goal (getting attention, for example) - which does get attention but does not achieve their deeper emotional objective of belonging. Similarly, once children realize that power will give them leverage over other family members, they seek power as an attempt to gain belonging. For example, children learn quickly that doing poorly in school can have a powerful and controlling effect on the family - "You can't make me learn!" Over the short term the child feels, as do the parents, like she has "won." It's true; parents can't force the child to learn. Because the child's power is acquired through obstinacy and stubbornness, the child is often emotionally or physically rejected instead of validated and loses any sense of belonging. She feels in control - but alone. Thus, the useless goal of power wins the battle (not doing school work) but loses the objective, the need to belong.

3. The youngest children, like the first born, may be more likely to experience personality problems later in life. This is the child who grows up knowing that he has the least amount of power in the whole family. He sees his older siblings having more

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