Psychodynamic explanations

• Freud believes that babies are born with little psychological gender differentiation (similar to Kohlberg theory) and that this continues until the phallic stage at around 3 years old
• At 3 years old boys experience Oedipus complex and girls experience Electra complex.

  These are unconscious emotional conflicts and their resolution leads to children learning sex role behaviours, through identification with the same sex parent
• Oedipus complex

  Boys become possessive of their mothers and wish to be the centre of their lives. This brings rivalry with the father and fear. The boy fears that the father will castrate him known as castration anxiety
• Castration anxiety - oedipus complex

  To avoid the fear of castration anxiety the boy gives up the desire for the mother and identifies with his father.

  This identification was to give the boy hope of one dat winning the love of a woman like his mother
• Identification - Oedipus complex

  Identification with the father leads to the boy developing a strong masculine gender identity in order to be like his father and a strong superego or conscience.

  This progress of taking on the fathers characteristics is known as internalisation
• Electra complex

  At 3 years old feels continue to love their mothers as the primary care givers but also start to develop strong feelings for their fathers.

  A girl may want to be centre of fathers life and have priveledge society grants to males - penis envy
• Electra complex - identification

  Girls blame their mother for making them female and this leads to feelings of anger and loss of the mothers love.

  In order to avoid this, girls identify with the mother and take on female gender role by internalisation of the mothers traits
• Freud believed that the Electra complex was a less powerful experience than the Oedipus complex as it did not involve fear of castration, merely the loss of mothers love.

  He claimed that females typically have less clear cut gender roles that males and less well developed morality
• AO3 - Little Hans case study

  Supports theory. Hans developed fear of horses and this was claimed to be an unconscious expression of fear of his father. Hans unconsciously desired his mother and feared castration from father. Hans had been told by his mother that his penis would be cut off and he associated this with a man telling his daughter not to touch a horse.

  Led to Hans associate fear of castration with fear of horses
• AO3 - problems with case studies

  Including subjectivity and lack of replicability. In Little Hans case Freud never actually met him and used secondary data.
• AO3 - similarities with Kohlberg and Gender Schema

  All three suggest that gender roles are learned by identification with same sex models.
• AO3 - fathers

  Identification of boys with their fathers is supposed to be based on fear and so those with the harshest fathers should have the strongest sense of gender identity.

  However to opposite seems true, as boys with less harsh fathers were found by Mussen and Rutherford to have more masculine identities
• AO3 - alpha bias

  It has been argued that the idea of penis even is reflected the patriarchal society which Freud lived in.

  It has been argued that male experience of 'womb envy' may be far more powerful emotion than penis envy. This is one way that the explanation shows alpha bias as it exaggerates gender differences
• AO3 - lack of evidence

  The unconscious conflicts Freud claims that children experience are difficult to test and prove.

  Unfalsifiable