PSYCHODYNAMIC APPROACH GENDER A03

• STRENGTH 


  Sone strength is that there is support for the oedipus complex.

  frueds theory means that for boys normal development depends on being raised by at least one male parent and there is support for this idea .

  rekers and morey rated the gender indentity of 49 boys ,75% of those judged as gender disturbed had no biological substitute father living with them .

  Suggest that being raised with no father may have a negative impact upon gender identity in line with what frueds theory would predict
• limitation 


  However bos and sandfort compared 63 children with lesbians and 68 children from traditional families and found there was no difference in terms of psychosocial adjustment or gender identity . this is a weakness as it contradicts freudis theory as it suggests fathers are not necessary for healthy gender identity development .
• limitation 


  another limitation is that the theory is pseudoscientific . freud has been criticised for the lack of rigour in his methods (case studies ) also many of his concepts such as penis envy are unconscious and untestable. this makes frueds theory pseudoscientific ( not a genuine science ) as his key ideas cannot be falsified ie proved wrong through scientific testing . This questions the validity of frued theory as it is not based on sound scientific methods .
• limitation 


  another issue with frueds Theory is that it suffers from temporal validity as it could be pointed out that frueds theories reflect the prevailing views of the time in which they were developed for example the notion of penis envy implies that women are inferior to men which is not an ideal /idea with which many people would now agree on . therefore this is a weakness as it suffers from a generalisability issue and his ideas are not longer relevant to todays society making his theory invalid .
• limitation 


  frued said children do not begin to show gender appropriate behaviour until after age 6 , although kohlberg agrees with gender consistency occurs at age 6 , kohlberg suggests that gender develops gradually through stages while freud suggests that gender is acquired all at once . this is a weakness as it seems frued view is too overly simplistic and it is very unlikely that such a complex concept arrives all at once as frued suggested .