I won’t write in depth regarding Freud, mainly for the sake of brevity and because his theories are widely considered to be inefficient and inaccurate. However, there is merit to the oral phase of his developmental theory in relation to cigarette smoking.
Freud's oral phase occurs in the first year of life where the baby’s existence is largely centered on instant gratification. Babies are oral, whether it’s nursing, eating, tasting a new toy, biting, crying, babbling, etc. Freud posited that if you didn’t mature and develop healthily, you would be stuck in certain developmental stages and riddled with anxiety (read more about anxiety here).
So the oral phase of Freud’s developmental theory emphasizes the need for oral gratification at any cost. An underlying aspect of the oral phase is the inability to tolerate frustration or cope with stress. A baby in the oral phase doesn’t have the capacity to cope with frustration, anxiety, and emotions. All they know is get comfort orally (e.g., mother’s breast, pacifier, biting, eating).
For a baby, nursing on the mother’s breast is the greatest comfort. Healthy development is the progression of receiving comfort from the mother (e.g., nursing), to self-comfort (e.g., pacifier, thumb-sucking), and to more advance mechanisms (e.g., crying and soothing self, verbally expressing feelings, etc.). As you progress, you become more independent and psychologically strong.
With that in mind, it doesn’t take much imagination to understand the gratification received from smoking a cigarette. A smoker literally takes a puff and receives gratification. However, the gratification received is short-lived and, more importantly, unhealthy. I'm not comparing smokers to babies, but smoking is infantile within the context of Freud's theory.
Think about it, the vast majority of smokers use cigarettes when increased stress levels are combined with an inability to cope in a healthy manner. In these moments, gratification is a decrease in stress/anxiety/emotionality. For some, a cigarette provides that instantly. The same logic can be applied to overeaters, alcoholics, or any other population struggling with addiction.
So if you want to stop smoking, it’s not about avoiding cigarettes. It’s about delaying instant gratification, recognizing the frustration of delayed gratification, finding effective coping strategies to manage frustration and anxiety, and then being consistent. When effective coping strategies are in place, you will get gratification in a healthy way.
If that sounds impossible, trying sucking your thumb instead of smoking that cigarette the next time you feel the urge. Just might work :)
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