Psychodynamic explanations of gender development.

• Pre-phallic children

  • Frued sees that children pass through 5 biologically-driven psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latency and genital.
  • Phallic stage is when gender development occurs between age of 3-6.
  • Prior the phallic stage, children have no concept of gender identity (male or female).
  • In the phallic stage, the focus of pleasure for the child switches to the genitals, and children experience the oedipus complex or electra complex. these stages are crucial for the formation of gender identity.
• Oedipus complex

  • A boy unconsciously develops sexual desires for his mother and sees his father as a rival.
  • Fears that his father will punish him for these feelings (castration anxiety).
  • To resolve this anxiety, the boy identifies with his father, adopting his characteristics and gender identity.
• Electra complex.

  • A girl experiences penis envy, believing she has been castrated.
  • She develops desire for her father, and sees her mother as a rival.
  • Girls develop a double-resentment towards their mother as firstly they're seen as love rival standing in the way of the father, and secondly the mother is blamed for girls not having a penis.
  • Over time, she identifies with her mother, internalising her gender role.
• Identification and internalisation.

  • Children resolve these complexes by identifying with the same-sex parent.
  • Through this, they internalise gender roles, which become part of their personality and gender identity.
  • Essentially then both boys and girls receive a second hand gender identity all at once at the end of the phallic stage.
• AO3 - Strength - supporting evidence for the oedipus complex.

  • For example, Reken and Morey, rated the gender identity of 49 boys aged 3-11 based on interviews with their families and children themselves. Of those who were 'gender disturbed', 75% has neither their biological father or substitute father living with them.
  • This increases the validity of Frueds idea as it suggests being raised with no father may have a negative impact on gender identity.
  • However the relationship between an absent father and problems of gender identity isn't supported by Bos and Sandfort, they compared data from 63 children with lesbian parents and 68 from traditional. those raised by lesbians felt less pressure to conform to gender stereotypes and less likely to assume their gender is 'superior'.
• AO3- Weakness - its androcentric - meaning its centres male gender development as the standard or norm.

  • For example, the concept of 'penis envy' introduced by Carl Jung + Fried, reflects a victorian era mindset where men held more social power than women. Feminist, Horney, counters this by proposing that 'womb envy' might be a more powerful emotion.
  • This highlights the androcentric bias, challenging the notion that women's gender development is primarily driven by the desire to be like men, thereby questioning the universality and fairness of Frueds explanation.
• AO3- weakness- it lacks reliability.

  • For example, Frued has based much of his evidence on subjective case studies such as Little Hans. Also, his ideas like 'penis envy' are suggested to be unconscious, which is untestable so unscientific. It's clear when you compare the psychodynamic approach to approaches like biological which consist of methods which are objective due to research being conducted in lab environments. According to Popper, this makes the psychodynamic explanation pseudoscientific, meaning the explanation isn't genuinely scientific and cannot be falsifiable.
  • This means that the approach with Frueds explanation isn't valid.