Gender- Psychodynamic Explanation of Gender

Question 1

What is the psychodynamic explanation of gender based on?

Answer 1

Freud’s ideas about psychosexual development

Question 2

What are Freud’s five stages of psychosexual development?

Answer 2

Oral, anal, phallic, latency, genital

Question 3

When do children develop their gender according to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory?

Answer 3

Between age 3 and age 5, during the phallic stage of development

Question 4

What does Freud say happens during the phallic stage?

Answer 4

Child becomes aware of the difference between males and females especially male and female genitalia

Question 5

What does the phallic stage originally lead to?

Answer 5

Unconscious desires and anxiety which children eventually resolve by identifying with the parent of their own sex and then internalising this parent

Question 6

What did Freud call this period of conflicting unconscious desires?

Answer 6

Oedipus complex, applied to boys

Question 7

How did Jung expand on Freud’s theory?

Answer 7

Proposing the Electra complex, similar process for girls

Question 8

What happens in the Oedipus complex?

Answer 8

Boys start to romantically desire their mother and begin to feel aggressive and jealous towards their father because he’s getting in the way of them fulfilling this desire

Question 9

What is castration anxiety?

Answer 9

Boys fear their father because they think he will castrate them if he finds out about their feelings towards their mother

Question 10

How do boys deal with their castration anxiety?

Answer 10

They start to identify with their father and then internalise him as their superego and develop a male gender identity

Question 11

What happens once boys have developed a male gender identity?

Answer 11

They displace their desire for their mother onto other women

Question 12

What do girls go through?

Answer 12

The Electra complex

Question 13

What is the Electra complex?

Answer 13

Girls experience penis envy when they realise they have no penis and wish they had one so start to desire their father because he has one

Question 14

How do girls feel towards their mother?

Answer 14

Feel hostile towards their mother because they blame her for their castration but also fear losing their mother’s love because of their feelings towards their father

Question 15

How do girls deal with the Electra complex?

Answer 15

They eventually repress these feelings and start to identify with their mother so they internalise her as their superego so they develop a female gender identity

Question 16

What happens once girls develop a female gender identity?

Answer 16

They repress their desire for a penis and substitute it with a desire for a baby

Question 17

What was Freud’s case study?

Answer 17

Little Hans was afraid of horses, based around correspondence with the father who reported conversations with Hans

Question 18

What did Hans’ father say?

Answer 18

Hans developed an interest with his own penis when he was around 3 and he had asked his mother is she had one
Hans had also dreamt he was married to his mother

Question 19

What did Freud think about Hans’ fear?

Answer 19

He thought that Hans had displaced his fear of his father onto horses