Rationale: One of Freud’s greatest contributions was his concept of psychosexual stages. He believed that a great deal of your personality is determined by which one of the psychosexual stages you are fixated in. 

 

In this exercise, imagine that you’re a psychologist and you would like to know which one of Freud’s psychosexual stages your patient is fixated in. design a test that will measure this.

 

For example, I would imagine that a person who was fixated in the oral stage would endorse this statement 1) I like to eat a lot. In order to make the test more accurate, it would be even better for this fictional patient who was taking your test to use a Likert rating scale, something you would probably have seen before, which is rating things on a scale of one to five where 1= strongly disagree, 2= disagree , 3= unsure , 4= agree, and 5= strongly Agree. So to complete the question, I would write 1) I like to eat a lot 1 2 3 4 5 ...Try to create something new....

 

Theoretically, my fictional patient would most likely circle a four or a five if, indeed, they were fixated in the oral stage. Thus, after completing the test, you would add up the scores and the stage with the highest scores would be the one you’re patient was fixated in. You will not have to give this test the anyone, just to design it. 

 

Avoid psychological jargon, keep in mind the fictional patient will not be familiar with psychological terminology. Also, make sure that high scores such as four and five show the fixation. In other words, don’t word the questions backwards. You could for example decide on a a question like this: 1) I don’t like to eat a lot 1 2 3 4 5 In that case, an endorsement of one or two would be indicative of an oral fixation. In real life, this is sometimes done.