Psychodynamic Explanation of Gender

• Psychosexual stages

  1. Oral stage (birth to 18 months)

  2. Anal stage (until age 3)

  3. Phallic stage (until age 6)

  4. Latent stage (until age 12)

  5. Genital stage (adult life)
• Oral stage


  Urge for instant gratification is focused on the mouth
• Anal stage


  Urge for instant gratification is focused on the anus
• Phallic stage


  Urge for instant gratification is focused on the penis
• Latent stage


  Impulses of the id are no longer focused on just one part of the body – so in effect, they are hidden
• Genital stage

  Urge for instant gratification is focused on the reproductive organs, does not involve fixations
• The phallic stage is where girls develop an Electra complex and boys develop an Oedipus complex.
• Oedipus Complex - A01

  During the Oedipus Complex, boys are sexually attracted to their mother, and so hate their fathers because they feel like they have to compete with them for their mothers’ attention. They want to kill their fathers, but know their fathers are stronger, so fear they will be overpowered and castrated. This sexual desire, hatred and fear are all repressed, but not resolved, which leads to a crisis.
• According to Freud, the Oedipus Complex presents a crisis , which is resolved when boys accept that their fathers are stronger and decide to identify with their fathers instead of killing them. This allows boys to keep their libidos repressed throughout the latent stage, until the genital stage, when they redirect their sexual desire for their mothers onto a girlfriend.
• FREUD IS ONE MESSED UP BISH
• According to the psychodynamic explanation of gender, girls develop the female gender by internalising their mothers' feminine attitudes and behaviours. And, an essential component of the female gender is converting penis envy into the desire for a child. Finally, girls redirect their desire for their own fathers onto their boyfriends.
• According to Freud, girls’ resolution of the phallic stage, and therefore their gender identity, is weaker for two reasons. Firstly, the status of women in society is lower, so girls have less reason to identify with their mothers than boys have to identify with their fathers. Secondly, girls believe they have already been castrated , so they have less to fear than boys. This leads to weaker internalisation of femininity, a weaker super-ego, and therefore a weaker morality.
• There are some serious limitations to the psychodynamic explanation of gender development. Firstly, because Freud’s methods were idiographic, they don’t test cause and effect, and therefore his conclusions may not generalise. Secondly, Freud did not support his conclusions with objective, empirical evidence, but only the case study of Little Hans. Finally, the subject of this case study probably only had castration anxiety because his mother explicitly threatened to have his penis cut off when he was three and a half.
• Support for Freud - Friedman conducted an experiment in which 300 children were asked to finish stories. The children made up sadder endings when the mother joined halfway through a father-daughter activity or when the father joined a mother-son activity. Friedman thought that this study supported the Oedipus and Electra Complexes because it suggested that children have more attraction to their opposite-sex parent, and more negative feelings towards their same-sex parent.
• Freud claimed that boys hate their fathers because of sexual jealousy over their mothers.

  
  

  Freidman claimed that boys’ negative reactions to their fathers supports Freud’s view.

  
  

  However, Malinowski’s study found that boys hate their uncles, who are responsible for punishing them, not their fathers, in the Trobriand Islands.
• Freud claimed that normal gender development required a crisis during the phallic stage, in which a child is sexually attracted to one parent and hates the other.

  On the other hand, if children don’t go through this crisis and resolve it in this way, Freud claimed that they would be unable to move beyond the phallic stage and internalise a gender.

  As a result of this, Freud believed that they were likely to become homosexual .
• Freud suggested that without going through a crisis where we feel sexual desire for one parent and hatred of the other, we cannot successfully resolve the phallic stage and internalise a gender.

  Snortum et al’s 1969 study provides nomothetic support for Freud’s claims by finding that gay men are more likely to report having close, controlling mothers and distant , rejecting fathers.

  However, hundreds of correlational studies find no link between homosexuality and absent fathers, or mothers.
• The psychodynamic explanation of gender is socially sensitive for at least two reasons:

  • Firstly, because by explaining homosexuality as a disease, it strengthened prejudices which harmed gay people.
  • Secondly, because by claiming that women are morally inferior, it lent credibility to prejudices against women.