The key experiences are weaning, eating, and sucking. The next stage, the anal stage, takes place while the infant is two to three years old. Sexual stimulation is derived as the infant begins to control and be aware of expelling and retaining feces. The key experience is toilet training. The third stage, called the phallic stage, is more complex and occurs between the age of four and five.
Pleasure comes from self-stimulation of the genitals.
The key experience involves sexual desires directed towards one's parents and the eventual repression of these desires. By this stage, the infant can sense that another person of the opposite sex is best suited to satisfy their sexual urges, and the parent is the ideal choice. Boys have sexual feelings for their mothers, while girls have feelings for their fathers. Furthermore, the other parent is seen as a threat, and consequently boys feel hostility towards their fathers and girls towards their mothers. Freud termed these feelings Oedipal desires, based on the figure of Greek myth, Oedipus, who unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother.