Psychodynamic explanation of gender development Flashcards
what is psychodynamics
stud of how our unconscious drives-shape behaviour feelings and personality applying it to gender development
Freud psychoanalytic theory
suggets that gendeed behaviour develops due to unconscious thought processes around the phallic stage (5yrs old)
what is the oedipus complex
boys have sexual feelings towards their mpther and see their father as a threat however fears the father due castration anxiety. The boy represses his feelings and decides to make father an ally identify and internalising with him
what is the electra complex
Girls feel in competition with their mother for their fathers attention /love. Eventually girls identify with their mother, taking on a female gender and replaces their desire for a penis with desire for a baby
what is identification
children want to be accepted by same sex parent and not seen as a threat, so imitate roles of same sex parents. Freud believes that this means they have internalised
Psychodynamic explanation of gender development AO3: meta analysis with children with/without father figures
Stevenson and Black conducted meta analysis of 67 studies on father absent families. Findings boys over 6 yrs old without father figures actually showed slightly more stereotypically masculine behaviours than boys with fathers. Green found that there was no significant difference in gender development between boys raised in heterosexual households to boys raised in lesbian households suggests the presence of “male father figure” is needed for gender development but in these studies it is not
Psychodynamic explanation of gender development AO3: children young as three displaying strong sex typed behaviour
Martin and little found children as young as three displayed strong sex-typed behaviours such as favouring gendered toys, suggests gendered behaviour can only begin with only limited understanding of gender and before the identification aspect of the phallic stage as predicted
Psychodynamic explanation of gender development AO3: Oedipus complex being unconscious
Oedipus complex is said to be an unconscious process = no way to directly test and measure oedipus complex ideas are untestable in experiments are not falsifiable, means theory is unscientific
Psychodynamic explanation of gender development AO3: HANs being case study research
Case study research, bias , subjective reducing validity little hans parents were close to freud so knew his theory so he could his story around freud theory
Psychodynamic explanation of gender development AO3: temporal validity
lacks temporal validity lots of nuclear families in 20th century but there is much wider variety of family structure than in Freuds time
