Psychodynamic

• Freud saw behaviour as motivated by unconscious drives with the structure of the mind consisting of the tripartite personality (ID, ego, superego) where the superego develops in the phallic stage around 3-6 years.
• The phallic stage where gender occurs is around 5-6 years and this is where children receive pleasure from their own genitals.

  They begin to pay attention to other people‘s genitals and understand the differences between them.

  In the phallic stage children start to build their gender identity and the main force behind this is their relationship behind their parents.
• Gender occurs through identification where children adopt characteristics of their same sex parents morals and values.

  Internalisation is when a person accepts attitudes or behaviours of another person and this is important in Freud‘s theory as the boy internalises his father‘s gender identity in the Oedipus and vice versa in the Electra.
• The oedipus complex is where boys identify with their fathers and want to replace him so they can have sexual relations with their mother. This leads to castration anxiety which makes them reject femininity and accept masculine traits.

  The resolution of this conflict results in the formation of the super ego and the internalisation of the father’s gender identity.
• The electra complex is where girls are jealous of their mothers because she has a penis and wants her father all to herself.

  She believes her mother has cut off her penis and resents her.

  She resolves this conflict by accepting femininity and identifying with her mother and internalising her mother‘s gender identity.
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  Research to support the psychodynamic explanation comes from the case study of Little Hans.

  Little Hans was scared of horses because he saw their large penises and blinders as representations of his father.

  This fear was because of castration anxiety which he felt because of his father.

  This supports Freud’s idea of the Oedipus complex as he associated Little Hans’ fear of horses as a representation of the fear he had of his father and manifested as such.

  This increases the validity of the psychdynamic theory.
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  An issues with the theory is that it fails to explain typical gender development in single sex families.

  This is because the theory follows the assumption that people in same sex families aren’t able to experience the Oedipus or electra complex and so don’t resolve conflicts and so boys become homosexuals because of their lack of father figure.

  This doesn’t account for those without a father figure who aren’t homosexual as Green found 1/37 children had a non typical gender identity when raised by gay or trans parents.

  This reduces the validity of the theory.
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  Contradictory research for the Oedipus complex suggest there is no evidence boys actually fear castration.

  Mussen and Rutherford found boys with warm supportive fathers identified better than those with overbearing threatening ones.

  This opposes Freud’s idea of fear dependence by providing contradictory evidence.

  Therefore this reduces the validity.
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  Gender bias issues are present is Freud’s research as he testified women were a mystery to him and as such the Electra complex was devised by Jung not Freud.

  Penis envy also has been criticised for reflecting patriarchal and repressive Victorian society as the cultural concept is not an innate trait.

  Therefore Freud’s research holds an alpha bias, exaggerating the differences between genders and pathologising women, and an androcentric assumption through the idea that female gender development is the same as men’s.