Psychodynamic Exp: Gender Dev Flashcards
Freud’s Pyschoanalytic Theory
1) Freud’s theory explains 5 psychosexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital.
2) Pre-phallic stage - children have no concept of gender identity. They have no understanding of ‘male’ or ‘female’.
Phallic stage is the focus for gender development.
3) Phallic stage - around 3-6 years, boys experience the Oedipus complex and girls experience the Electra complex.
Oedipus Complex
1) During the phallic stage boys develop feelings towards their mother.
2) They feel a jealous hatred for their father who has what the boy desires (the mother).
3) Boys recognise their father is more powerful and fear being discovered and think the father will castrate the son (castration anxiety).
4) To alleviate this anxiety, the boy begins to identify with his father.
Electra Complex
1) Jung used the term Electra complex to describe the conflict that girls experience. Freud called it penis envy.
2) During the phallic stage girls feel competition with their mother for their father’s love.
3) Resent their mother because they believe that she is responsible for their lack of a penis.
4) Substitute this with a desire to have their own children and through this they finally identify with their mother and her gender.
The Superego
1) The boy/girl internalise the behaviours of the same-sex parent as their superego.
2) The superego develops during this stage and guides our behaviour by taking into account our morals.
3) This will result in the boy/girl developing a their gender identity.
Internalisation
Boys adopt the attitudes and values of their father, and girls adopt those of their mother.
Freud referred to this process as internalisation of parents’ identity. This happens all at once.
Little Hans
1) Little Hans was a 5-year-old boy with a morbid fear of being bitten by a horse.
2) Freud’s interpretation was that Hans’s fear of horses represented his actual fear of being castrated by his father because of Hans’s love for his mother.
3) Freud suggested that Hans had transferred his fear of his father onto horses via displacement (a defence mechanism).
Limitation of Theory
LACK OF GENERALISABILITY
1) Lack of generalisability to a whole population.
2) Freud argued that everyone goes through the Oedipus complex (Electra complex).
3) However, he based a lot of his ideas on those people with psychological problems.
4) Used case studies that are unique to individuals.
–> Therefore, it may not be possible to generalise the ideas to the population.
Limitation of Theory
OUTDATED THEORY
1) Difficulty in applying to a modern society.
2) Women in the early 1900s had very little power in relation to men, therefore, the concept of penis envy may have been more applicable.
–> However, with changing norms and a more equal society, this concept is outdated.
Limitation of Theory
PSEUDOSCIENTIFIC / UNFALSIFIABLE
1) Many of his concepts (e.g. penis envy) are unconscious and untestable.
2) This makes Freud’s theory pseudoscientific as his key ideas
cannot be falsified.
—> This questions the validity of Freud’s theory as it is not based on sound scientific evidence.
Limitation of Theory
SUBJECTIVE/ BIASED
1) The case study was based on Freud’s own interpretations of Han’s actions.
2) Therefore, researchers and scientists are unable to scientifically test and verify his findings.
–> Subjective as Freud could develop interpretations that matched his own theories.
1) Info was collected by the father who was a fan of Freud’s work –> findings could be biased because of social desirability bias.
