Psychodynamic explanation of Gender development

• Explain what is meant by 'identification'?

  -Identification is a concept whereby a person adopts a set of attitudes or behaviours due to a desire to associate with a particular person or group

  -This is important in gender development as through the Oedipus and Electra complexes, the child comes to identify with their same sex parent
• Explain what is meant by 'internalisation'?

  -Occurs when a person accepts these attitudes and behaviours as their own.

  -When children identify with their same sex parent, they internalise their shared gender, thus receiving second hand gender identity
• outline Freuds psychodynamic theory of gender development

  -Freuds psychodynamic theory explains how gender development occurs during the phallic stage of development

  -prior to this phase, children have no concept of gender identity, with Freud often describing them as 'bisexual, in this case meaning that they are neither masculine or feminine

  -However, during the phallic stage, the focus of the pleasure switches to the genitals and children experience either the Oedipus or the Electra complex based on their sex- which is critical to the formation of gender identity
• explain what is meant by 'Oedipus Complex'?

  -Oedipus complex is where boys will develop investuous feelings towards their mother and hold a jealous and murderous hatred for their father, who they see as standing in the way of the mothers love

  -However, the boy also realises that the father is more powerful than he is and he fears he may be castrated by his father, which is known as castration anxiety

  -In order to resolve this conflict, the boy gives up the love for his mother, and begins tom identify with their father, which Freud refers to as identification with the aggressor
• explain what is meant by the electra complex

  -Electra complex is where the girls experience two key things: Penis Envy and perceiving their mother as competition for their fathers love

  -As a result of this, girls develop a double-resentment of their mother as both a love rival and the person to blame for their lack of penis

  -However, over time, girls come to accept that they will never have a penis, and substitute this envy for the desire to have children

  -Furthermore, they realise that they don't want to lose their mothers love over their father, and so repress these feelings, identifying with the mother as a result
• AO1-


  The critical element is that children of both sexes identify with their same-sex parent to resolve their complex, and thus internalise the gender identity of that parents

  -this cements their own gender identity in place
• AO3-Support - Little Hans

  -case study on Little Hans

  -conducted by Freud

  -Hans was a 5 year old boy, at the phallic stage of development where he developed sexual feelings for his mother and hatred for his father, leading to castration anxiety

  -This suggest that through resolving the oedipus complex, his anxiety also dissipated as he internalised his father's gender identity and thus no longer felt castration anxiety
• Limitation- Unable to falsify

  -Oedipus complex is unconscious and it is impossible to falsify

  -It cannot be tested or reliably proved and this makes it an unscientific explanation for gender development

  -Also there is contradictory evidence as Freud suggests that boys with strict fathers would go on to develop a stronger sense of gender identity because they would suffer more castration anxiety and therefore identify more strongly with their father when their oedipus complex is resolved

  -However Blackmore and Hill found that boys with more liberal fathers are more likely to be more secure in their masculine identity, which does not fit with Freuds theory of gender development
• Limitation- lack of representation/generalisability

  Freuds theory is only applicable to children who grew up in a nuclear family, as both the oedipus and electra complexes require both a same-sex and opposite-sex parent to be the only main caregivers

  -however, many boys grow up in a single-parent families, have parents of the same gender, or otherwise raised in a non-nuclear family environment

  -No research evidence that this detrimentally affects their gender development, which challenges the validity of Freuds theories

  -Golombok et al showed that children from single-sex families went to develop normal gender identities even when the parent and child were opposite gender

  -reduces tha validity
• Limitation- Electra Complex/ Lacking temporal validity

  -Electra complex was theorised by Carl Jung one of Freuds colleagues

  -Freud openly admitted that women were a mystery to hi. and this notion of penis envy has been criticised for reflecting the patriarchal victorian era within which he lived in

  -Horney suggested that a more overwhelming emotion than penis envy is the male experience of 'womb envy' resulting from a mans lack of ability to nurture and sustain life

  -it is possible that the psychodynamic explanations of gender development are a product of their time

  -lacks temporal validity
• Limitation- unscientific


  -Highly criticised for being unscientific

  -Many of the concepts Freuds refers to in his theory of gender development are unconscious and therefore untestable

  -provides a stark contrast to other explanations of gender such as those based on hormonal factors that are based on objective evidence from controlled lab experiments

  -According to popper, as Freuds theory can't be tested and his key ideas can't be falsified- makes his theory pseudoscientific