Psychodynamic Explanation

Question 1

What did Freud see conscious behaviours as?

Answer 1

Motivated by unconscious drives, with the structure of the mine consisting of the id, ego and superego

Question 2

What are children perceived as in the first 2 stages of the psychosexual stages?

Answer 2

‘Bisexual’ as there are no visible differences between behaviour in boys and girls

Question 3

What happens in the phallic stage?

Answer 3

It’s libido (life force) is seen as increasing focused on their genitals and it is this stage when child’s gender identity develops through the resolution of either the oedipus complex or electra complex

Question 4

What did Freud believe?

Answer 4

That people could become fixated at any stage thus affecting later behaviour

Question 5

What happens in the phallic stage?

Answer 5

The child unconsciously sexually desires the opposite sex parent and is jealous of the same sex parent

Question 6

How do children deal with these feelings and the anxiety?

Answer 6

They identify with their same sex parent, this process takes place unconsciously, they adopt the same gender identity of their same sex parent

Question 7

What is the oedipus complex?

Answer 7

Where in the phallic stage boys develop sexual desires for their mother and become jealous of their father seeing them as a rival for the mothers affections

Question 8

What is castration anxiety?

Answer 8

Where the father is more powerful and they become afraid the father will found out and respond by castrating them

Question 9

How do boys resolve this conflict?

Answer 9

They give up their love for their mother and identify with their father, taking on the gender identity of the father (internalisation)

Question 10

What is the electra complex?

Answer 10

Where during the phallic stage girls experience penis envy, resenting their mother for having removed their penis

Question 11

What did Carl Jung suggest?

Answer 11

That girls eventually accept that they do not have a penis and substitute this desire for the desire to have children

Question 12

Who do girls identify with?

Answer 12

Their mother as a means of resolving their electra complex and take on the gender identity of their mother (internalisation)

Question 13

When is gender identity formed?

Answer 13

At the end of the phallic stage, Freud suggested that women never really progress beyond the phallic stage and there remains some fixation

Question 14

What did Snortum do?

Answer 14

Reported that 46 males exempted from military services for being homosexual had more close bonding and controlling mothers and rejecting, detached fathers

Question 15

What does this suggest?

Answer 15

That males who fail to resolve their oedipus complex by identifying with their fathers can become homosexual

Question 16

What did Wisezewska do?

Answer 16

Asked female participants to rate the attractiveness of pictures of different kinds of men and to assess the quality of their relationship with their fathers

Question 17

What did the researcher also compare?

Answer 17

The similarity of the images females found attractive to those of their father

Question 18

What did Wisezewska find?

Answer 18

That women who had been well treated well by and had close relationships with their fathers as children were attracted to men who resembled their fathers physically

Question 19

What are 3 evaluation points?

Answer 19

• Inadequate account of female development
• Lack of scientific rigour
• Disagreement with other approaches