Psychodynamic Explanation of Gender Development

Question 1

Which psychosexual stage is involved with gender development?

Answer 1

• Stage 3, the phallic stage
• Occurs age 3-6
• This is where children either go through the Oedipus complex or the Electra complex

Question 2

What is the Oedipus complex?

Answer 2

• This is what boys are said to experience in the phallic stage, they fall in love with their mother and develop hatred for their father.
• The boy recognises their father is more powerful than he is and develops castration anxiety.
• Due to this, the boy gives up his love for his mother and identifies with his father.

Question 3

What is the Electra complex?

Answer 3

• This is what girls are said to experience during the phallic stage.
• The girl sees her mother as a rival for her father’s love and believes her mother castrated her and herself, creating a ‘double-resentment’
• Over time, the girl will replace their ‘penis envy’ with the desire to have a child and so identifies with the mother.

Question 4

What is the Little Hans case study?

Answer 4

• This was Freud’s sole piece of evidence to support his theory of the Oedipus complex
• Hans watched a horse collapse and die in the street as a child and developed a fear of being bitten by horses
• Hans had displaced his fear of being castrated by his father onto the horse as a defence mechanism (since the horse reminded him of his father)

Question 5

How can this theory be criticised?

Answer 5

• Freud’s theory suggests that boys with stricter fathers should grow up to have a more robust sense of masculinity, however Blakemore and Hill (2008) found that this was actually the case for boys with more liberal fathers
• This is an incomplete theory as the Electra complex is very underdeveloped as a concept.
• Freud’s only evidence comes form a case study which can be criticised in many ways
• It has been suggested that, in some societies, it may actually be the case that boys experience ‘womb envy’ rather than girls ‘penis envy’- the idea that all girls innately want to be like men is criticised as being an androcentric assumption .
• Freud’s theory does not account for non-nuclear families producing children who grow up to have ‘typical’ gender identities (as shown Golombok et al and Green in separate studies)
• Since the Oedipus and Electra complexes are unconscious phenomena, they are untestable meaning Freud’s theory is pseudoscientific and unfalsifiable.
• Freud’s theory suggests that a gender identity is developed all at once around age 6, this is contrasting to ideas from other theories in which it is developed gradually, starting at a much younger age.