psychodynamic explanations of gender development Flashcards
the psychodynamic approach suggests that all children mature through the same 5 psychosexual stages
oral , anal , phallic , latency and genital
freud proposed that
children’s perception of gender identity develops in the phallic stage before which they were considered ‘ bisexual ‘ because they did not identify with either gender
each psychosexual stages are characterised by a conflict
the oedipus and electra complexes are the result of a child attempt to
resolve conflict during the phallic stage
the oedipus complex suggests that boys suffer from castaration anxiety and so fear their father but at the same time
despise their father for standing in the way of the boy realising their sexual desires felt towards their mother
however as the child comes to the fact that they will be unable ti express their feelings thus internalise their fathers values, through the process of internalisation .
although females do not experience castaration anxiety they suffer from penis envy instead , this is where girls in the phallic stage
despise their mother for not providing them with a penis and also for standing in the way of their child reassign their sexual desires towards their father
- therefore in the same way as the oedipus complex the girl identifies with the mother after accepting that she is not an obstacle that can be removed
therefore freud placed great emphasis on the oedipus complex and the electra complex as mechanisms of
resolving the psychosexual conflict present in the phallic stage and thus in the development of gender identity
these ideas can be supported using the case study of little Hans where frued believed that
little Hans’ phobia of horses was the result of the displacement (a defence mechanism) pf castration anxiety from his father onto the horse
a limit of Freuds psychodynamic explanation of gender development can be said to lack scientific rigour as well as the emphasis on objectivity and replicability associated with the natural sciences
this is a particular problem with
the case study of little Hans
freud conducted the interviews himself , drawing very subjective interpretations of the date which is likely to have poor inter rater reliability due to the multiple subjective conclusions which can be drawn
- therefore the ideas of the oedipus and electra complexes are far from universal and is capable of little generalisability to the general population because a baseline comparison must be provided by further examples
another weakness is the lack of clarity over the development of gender identity in females , particularly because the idea of the Electra complex was developed by Jung and not freud , Horney has criticised the Electra complex as
suffering from androcentrism and gender bias because it has assumed that girls have an innate predisposition to aspire towards men , due to their penisis rather than conversely.
for example the same logic can be used to suggest that men are envious of the unique female ability to have children
- therefore this may be considered a social construct as opposed to scientifically proven maturational stage of gender development which all children experience , not universal.
another weakness is that there is a lack of evidence supporting the idea of the oedipus complex , if a father was especially harsh then it could be argued that this places more pressure on the boy to identify with the values of their father in order to resole the increasingly large castaration anxiety , however Blackmore and hill 2008 have demonstrated the opposite where
sons of more liberal fathers actually identify themselves as more masculine than those with strict fathers , which is not as predicted by freud .
- therefore Freuds psychodynamic explanation of gender development appears to have little ecological validity and is not a universal concept
