freud theory on gender Flashcards
. The Oedipus complex
One strength of Freud’s theory is there is some support for the role of the Oedipus complex in gender development.
Freud’s explanation of gender development means that, for boys, ‘normal’ development depends on being raised by at least one male parent. There is some support for this idea. George Rekers and Shasta Morey (1990) rated the gender identity of 45 boys aged3 11 years based on interviews with their families and the children themselves. Of those who were judged to be ‘gender disturbed”, 75% had neither their biological father nor a sukstitute father living with them.
This suggests that being raised with no father may have a negative impact upon gender identity - in line with what Freud’s theory would predict.
Counterpoint
Counterpoint Generally though, the relationship between absent fathers and problems of gender identity is not supported. A study by Henny Bos and Theo Sandfort (2010) compared data from 63 children where both parents were lesbians and 68 children from ‘traditional’ families. Children raised by lesbian parents felt less pressure to conform to gender stereotypes and were less likely to assume their own gender was superior, but there were no differences in terms of psychosocial adjustment or gender identity.
This contradicts Freud’s theory as it suggests that fathers are not necessary for healthy gender identity development.
Female development
One limitation is Freud’s inadequate account of women’s development.
Although Freud wrote extensively about the Oedipus complex, much of the theorising on girls’ parallel development was undertaken by Carl Jung, one of Freud’s contemporaries, who also produced a psychoanalytic theory. Freud admitted that women were a mystery to him and his notion of penis envy has been criticised as reflecting the androcentric Victorian era during which he lived where men held so much power. Indeed, the feminist psychoanalyst Karen Horney
(1942) argues that a more powerful emotion than penis envy is men’s experience of ‘womb envy’ - a reaction to women’s ability to nurture and sustain life. Horney argued that penis envy (like womb envy) was a result of cultural rather than biological factors.
This challenges the idea that women’s gender development is founded on a desire to want to be like a man (an androcentric bias).
Pseudoscientific
Another limitation is that the psychodynamic explanation lacks scientific credibility.
Freud has often been criticised for the lack of rigour in his methods (using subjective case studies). Also many of his concepts (such as penis envy) are untestable because they are largely unconscious. This contrasts sharply with other explanations of gender that are based on objective, verifiable evidence derived from controlled lab studies. According to the philosopher of science Karl Popper (1959), this makes Freud’s theory pseudoscientific (not genuine science) as his key ideas cannot be falsified, i.e. proved wrong through scientific testing.
This questions the validity of Freud’s theory as it is not based on sound scientific
The nature of development
Freud argued that children do not begin to show gender-appropriate behaviour until after age 6 (when the Oedipus/Electra conflict is resolved). To some extent this agrees with Kohlberg’s theory which suggests that children only begin to act in a gender-appropriate way after they have achieved gender constancy (also around 6).
Where there is disagreement, however, is that Kohlberg suggests that the child’s concept of gender develops gradually, via a sequence of stages as the child’s cognitive capacity increases. Kohlberg charts a sequence of developmental stages, each marked by increased understanding as the child’s maturity and gender concept grows. Once gender constancy is reached (around 6), the child will begin to search the environment for role models who are the same gender as themselves and imitate gender-appropriate behaviour. In contrast, Freud sees no such gradual build-up and instead suggests that gender is acquired in one fell swoop – that is, all at once.
Freud’s view seems overly simplistic. It is unlikely that such a complex concept arrives ‘second-hand’ and all at once as Freud suggested.
