Gender

• What is psychodynamics?


  • Psychodynamics is the study of how unconscious drives shape behaviour, feelings and personality and has been applied to gender development.
• What is Oedipus complex?

  Oedipus complex:

  -Boys have sexual feelings towards mother, but see their father as a sexual rival and threat.

  -Concern that the father will find out develops into castration anxiety.

  -The boy decides to make the father an ally by becoming like him (identification)
• What is the Electra Complex?

  Electra complex:

  -Suggested by Jung (1913) is girls feel in competition with their mother for their father's attention/love.

  -Eventually girls also identify with her mother, taking on a female gender and replaces their desire for a penis (penis envy) with desire for a baby.
• What is the concept of identification?

  Identification:

  -Male and female children ultimately want to be accepted by the same sex parent and not seen as a threat, so they imitate the gender role of the same sex parent.

  -At this point Freud suggests the child has resolved the Oedipus / Electra complex and internalised, their gender identity/role. Meaning they have emerged from the phallic stage with the behaviours and attitudes of their same sex parent.
• What is the Psychoanalytic theory?


  -Freud's psychoanalytic theory suggests gendered behaviour develops due to unconscious thought processes.

  -An individuals sexuality develops during the five psychosexual stages, gender development occurs when they resolve the 3rd "phallic" stage at around 5 years old.