Psychodynamic Explanation of Gender Development

Question 1

What did Freud argue that males and females experience after passing through the oral and anal psychosexual stages of development?

Answer 1

A different complex (or crisis) during the phallic stage aged around 5.
If the child successfully resolves this crisis they acquire the gender behavior typical of their sex.

Question 2

What do boys wish for in the phallic stage of development?

Answer 2

to be the sole object of their mother’s attention and experience immature sexual desire for her

Question 3

How do boys view their fathers?

Answer 3

as a rival for their mother’s attention/affection but also fear the father and feel guilty about their desires to get rid of him

Question 4

What do boys fear about their fathers?

Answer 4

a fear of castration

Question 5

How do boys resolve the crisis?

Answer 5

boys repress their desires for their mother and enter a period of sexual latency (which lasts until puberty) where they find a substitute mother in the form of a girlfriend/partner.

Question 6

What do boys do with their father?

Answer 6

identify with (identification) and internalise (internalisation) their father’s gender role and adopt stereotypically masculine behaviors.

Question 7

Who are girls initially attracted to?

Answer 7

their mothers in the same way as boys

Question 8

What does the awareness of the lack of penis lead to?

Answer 8

Girls believing she has been castrated and experiencing penis envy

Question 9

Who does the girl’s immature sexual desire then focus on?

Answer 9

The father

Question 10

How do girls resolve this crisis?

Answer 10

converts her desire for a penis into a desire for a baby

Question 11

Who does the girl then identify and internalise?

Answer 11

Her mother

Question 12

What do girls do at the end of the phallic stage?

Answer 12

repress their desires for their father and enter a period of sexual latency (which lasts until puberty) where they find a substitute mother in the form of a boyfriend/partner

Question 13

What did Freud’s highly controversial case study of Little Hans form the beliefs of?

Answer 13

the Oedipus Complex

Question 14

What was 5 year old Hans scared of?

Answer 14

horses

Question 15

What did Freud argue Hans phobia replaced?

Answer 15

a repressed and displaced fear of his father

Question 16

What did Freud also claim about Hans?

Answer 16

expressed sexual desire towards his mother and wished his father dead, and feared castration.

Question 17

How can you criticise the Little Hans study?

Answer 17

generalising from a sample of 1 boy

and that Freud may have interpreted Han’s behavior to provide proof for the Oedipus Complex.

Question 18

What did the case study of Levine (21) claim?

Answer 18

that of 32 manic-depressives, 22 were suffering from unresolved Oedipal or Electra crises, have problems with researcher bias and subjectivity.

Question 19

What do Feminists argue about Freud?

Answer 19

inherently sexist (e.g. penis envy) and views females as less moral than men (because they did not suffer a much fear of the father at a young age

Question 20

What do Post-Freudians argue?

Answer 20

that penis envy is symbolic: i.e. women are envious of men’s’ power and status in society.

Question 21

What do these theories imply about single-parent households?

Answer 21

fail to acquire gender identity in the normal way. Patterson (04) found that the gender identity of girls raised by lesbian mothers was very similar to those raised by heterosexual parents.