psychodynamic explanation of gender development

• Freuds psychodynamic developmental theory explains 5 psychosexual stages which are oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital. There are 2 sections of the phallic stage which are the pre-phallic stage where children have no concept of gender identity, they have no understanding of male or female and dont organise themselves or others this way. The other stage is the phallic stage which occurs around 3-6 years old and boys experience the oedipus complex and girls experience the electra complex
• during the phallic stage boys develop incesteous feelings towards their mother. They want their mother for themselves and so they feel a jealous hatred for their father who has what they boy desires. Boys recognise that their father is more powerful and they fear that on discovering their son’s desire for the mother, their father will castrate the son
• Freud called the electra complex penis envy. It occurs in the phallic stage and girls feel in competition with their mother for their father’s love. Girls also resent their mother because they believe that she is responsible for their lack of penis
• for a boy the conflict between his desires and his castration anxiety is resolved when the boy gives up his love for his mother and begins to identify with his father. For girls, they acknowledge that they will never have the penis that they desire. They substitute this with a desire to have their own children and through this they finally identify with their mother and her gender
• boys adopt the attitudes and values of their father and girls adopt those of their mother. Freud referred to this as internalisation of parents identity
• Little Hans was a 5 year old boy with a morbid fear of being bitten by a horse. His fear appeared to stem from an incident when he had seen a horse collapse and die in the street. Freud’s interpretation was that Han’s fear of being castrated by his father because of Han‘s love for his mother. Freud suggested that Hans had transferred his fear of his father onto horses via displacement
• One strength is there is support for the oedipus complex. Freud’s theory means that for boys, normal development depends on being raised by at least one male parent. There is some support for this idea. Researchers rated the gender identity of 49 boys aged 3-11. 75% of those who judged gender disturbed had no biological or substitute father living with them. This suggests that being raised with no father may have a negative impact upon gender identity, in line with Freud’s theory would predict
• One limitation is Freud’s theory doesn’t fully explain female development. Freud’s idea of penis envy has been criticised as merely reflecting the era he lived and worked in, where males held so much of the power. Researchers argued that in fact men‘s womb envy was more prominent. This challenges the idea that female gender development was founded on a desire to want to be like men
• One limitation is that the theory is pseudoscience. Freud is criticised for the lack of rigour in his methods. Also, many of his concepts and unconscious and untestable. This makes Freud’s theory pseudoscience as his key ideas cannot be falsified. This questions the validity of Freud’s theory as it is not based on sound scientific evidence