psychodynamic on gender development

• what is the unconscious

  the part of the mind we are unaware of that directs behaviour
• the parts in the tripartite personality structure

  • ID
  • ego
  • superego
• what are defence mechanisms

  unconscious strategies that to ego uses to manage conflicts between the ID and the superego
• psychic determinism

  unconscious forces and drives are inborn and control or determine behaviour
• psychosexual stages:

  • oral ( 0 - 18 month ) - centred on the mouth
  • anal ( 18 - 36 month ) - focus on bladder elimination
  • phallic ( 3 - 6 years ) - focus on genital
  • latency ( 6 - puberty ) - sexuality is inactive
  • genital ( puberty + ) - sexual feelings towards others
• freuds theory of gender development

  • before 3 years old gender identity is flexible as there is no clear difference between boys and girls
  • children are bisexual as they has no sense of being masculine or feminine
  • when children move up to the phallic stage, their understanding of gender begins to change
• the phallic stage

  • lasts from 3 - 6 years old
  • focal point of pleasure is the genitals
  • they begin to pay attention to other people's genitals and thus begin to understand the physical differences between male and females
  • this is the start of children developing gender identity
• what is the main force behind gender development

  the childs relationship with their parents
• what are the two complexes

  oedipus and electra complex
• oedipus complex:

  • all young boys develop a passionate desire for their mothers
  • they want to possess their mother for themselves
  • see their father as the rival , leads to jealousy
  • afraid their father will discover their desire for their mum and punish them by removing their genitals
  • this fear is known as castration anxiety
  • they view their father as more powerful than them
  • conflict = fear of father and lust for mother
  • resolution = gives up the lust and begins to identify with the father
• electra complex:

  • all young girls develop a passionate desire for their fathers
  • they resent their mother as they realise they don't have a penis
  • they believe they had been castrated and blame their mother for this
  • girls experience penis envy as they are jealous they fathers / brothers have a penis and they don't
  • since they cannot have a penis they substitute this desire for the desire to have a baby so they begin to identify with their mother
  • fear = losing their mothers love
  • conflict = lust for father and fear of losing their mothers love
• identifiation

  • towards the end of the phallic stage, children resolve their conflicts by identifying with the same sex parent
  • identification develops a superego as they adopt the same sex parents morals
  • identification develops the childs gender identity and their role as male or female
• little hans - case study :

  • little hans = 5 year old boy who had become very afraid when he saw a horse fall on the street, as he assumed the horse was dead he became very frightened of them
  • this information was interpreted via the oedipus complex
  • suggested little hans had a sexual desire for his mother
  • the horse represented his fear of his father, whom he wanted dead
  • all communication was done via letter between freud and hans' father
  • freud only met hans a few times
• inadequate account for female development

  • freud wrote vastly of the oedipus complex and stated women were a mystery to him
  • his idea of penis envy has been heavily criticised as reflecting the patriarchal and repressive victorian society in which he lived
  • his theory is culturally specific and penis envy is a cultural concept rather than an innate characteristic
  • his idea on female development is driven by the thought that females desire to be men, which is an androcentric assumption
  • thus, the theory is gender biased and culturally biased as well
• being raised by a non nuclear family doesn't affect gender development

  • freuds theory relies on having two opposite sex parents so they have an effect on both the complexes
  • this would suggest that being raised by same sex parents would have an effect on gender development
  • however, evidence doesn't support this finding, research shows children raised in single parent families form normal gender identities
• theory lacks scientific rigour

  • the psychodynamic approach is unscientific in its description of human behaviour
  • freuds concepts are subjective and impossible to scientifically test
  • thus , the theory is unfalsifiable as it cannot be empirically tested, so there isn't any evidence suggesting the unconscious mind actually exists
  • so we cannot provide any evidence that gender development takes place in the unconscious and that the electra and oedipus complex are factual instead of absract ideas