Psychodynamic explanation of gender

• Freud saw gender development

  through psychosexual stages- unresolved conflicts occurring during these stages affected later behaviour

  oral stage 0-1

  anal 1-3

  phallic 3-6

  latency 6-12

  genital 12

  gender development occurs during the phallic stage
• oedipus complex

  in phallic stage

  boys experience

  develop passionate desire for their mothers- see father as rival therefore jealously

  wishes father dead- castration anxiety

  fear- castration

  conflict- between lust for mother and fear of father to resolve this boy gives up love for mother and identifies with his father
• electra complex

  phallic stage

  young girls have passionate desire for faster see themselves and their mother in competition for fathers love

  girls experience penis envy ]resent mother as realise don't have penis believe they were castrated and blame mother for this

  fear- loosing mother love

  conflict- between lust for father and fear of loosing mothers love

  resolve conflict by identifying with mother, subsitiute desire with desire for children
• identification and internalisation

  end of phallic stage children resolve their conflict by identifying with same sex parent

  boys adopt the attitudes and values of their father and girls of their mother

  involves children taking on board gender identity of the same sex parent-internalisation

  boys and girls develop their superego, gender identity and role and the end of the phallic stage
• identification

  desire to be associated with a particular person or group often because they possess certain desirable characteristics
• internalisation

  where an individual adopts the attitudes and or behaviour of another
• case of little Hans

  used as evidence for the odeipus complex

  Hans was 5 and fear of being bitten by a horse

  Hans fear appeared to have stemmed from an accident where he saw a horse collapse and die in the street, Freuds interpretation was that Hans fear of being bitten represented fear of crastration

  Hans had displaced his fear of his father onto horses
• weakness

  research doesn't support odeipus complex- little Hans

  the study is too subjective his father was a follower of freud there only gave details that would match with the theory

  one individual- cannot generalise

  doesn't account for female development- freud admitted women were a mystery- probably product of time as men seen to be more superior to women

  non nuclear families?- Freuds theory relies on two gender families but no research supports a non-nuclear family e.g gay parents, single parents etc

  not scientific at all