Psychodynamic explanation

• A01

  • Freud; gender development during phallic stage, child between ages 3-6, experiencing unconcious conflicts, oedipus/electra
  • Oedipus; boy develops hatred for father due to love for mother, fear discovery of love will lead to castration
  • Electra; girls feel competition with mother for fathers love, resent mother as they believe she is responsible for their lack of penis
  • Identification; boy, conflict between his desires/castration anxiety is resolved when giving up love for mother and identifies with dad
  • girls acknowledge they wont have a penis and instead desire a family so they identify with their mum
  • Identification with same sex parent leads to internalisation, takes on gender identity of same sex parent at age 6
• Supporting evidance

  P- evidance to support

  E- Little Hans, fear of being bitten by a horse represented fear of castration and this had been displaced onto his father

  E- black surroundign their eyes reminded Little hans of his father, their blinkers resembling the mans glasses

  L- subjective interpretation, difficult to falsify unconcious conflict
• Opposing research

  P- research to oppose

  E- no difference in gender identity for children from 'traditional families' and children raised by parents who were lesbians

  E- having 2 parents of a different gender is not essential for normal gender

  L- incomplete explanation, assumes there would have been problems with identification and internalisation
• Real-world applications

  P- able to explain why boys often show stronger sex-typing than girls

  E- TV adverts with women in non-stereotypical roles reduced stereotyping in young girls but not boys

  E- girls arent under the same pressure to identify with the same-sex parent as boys as they dont have castration anxiety

  L- Kohlberg struggles to account for this difference as they propose nomothetic stage-based model for gender development