Psychodynamic Explanations To Gender Flashcards
Interactionist
Psychosexual stages are innate. Experience of how we overcome conflict shapes our adult personality.
Conscious, subconscious or Unconscious?
Unconscious
Key psychosexual stage
Phallic: obtain your gender, before this a child is essentially bisexual.
ID
Pleasure principle, immediate gratification
Ego
Reality principle, Mediator
Superego
Morality principle, obtained after successful completion of phallic stage (off same sex parent).
Oedipus complex
Boys desire their mum, see dad as competition for mum’s love. They notice that nit everyone has a penis, develop castration anxiety (fear dad chopping off their penis). They decide to give up their love for their mother and ACTIVELY identify with their father, in doing so they take on the male gender identity - the fathers superego (morals).
Electra complex
Girls desire their fathers sexually and believe that they have already been castrated by their mothers. They develop penis envy. They then give up this desire for a penis, in favour of having a baby (boy with penis so they still have some power) and passively identify with their mothers.
+ AO3 POSITIVE - little hans (and counters)
+ little hans: 5 year old who developed a fear of horses. Freud suggested that his phobia was displacement - he had repressed his fear of dad and displaced it onto the horse he saw die in the street. This backs up the Oedipus complex/conflicts.
HOWEVER this is one single case study, meaning it is open to researcher bias and can be interpreted differently by different people. Also, this case could be better explained by classical conditioning (behaviourist psychology)
AO3 NEGATIVES
- Freuds theory reflects the era in which it was developed (patriarchy). Horney (67) Stated men have prominent womb envy, envious of women’s ability to nurture and sustain life, therefore created alternate explanations to support their agenda. This means Freud’s theory is androcentric (male centred), as well as having the alphabias of exaggerating the differences between men and women.
-Much if Freud’s theory is based on the unconscious level, therefore it is difficult to explain and test. As a result, many of his concepts such as the Oedipus complex are deemed untestable, reducing the validity of the psychodynamic approach to explaining gender development.
Single parent families
- Freud suggested that single parent families with opposite gender children are unable to experience/Oedipus complex and do not resolve conflicts necessary to develop a healthy gender identity.
- boys therefore would become homosexual with no father figure to identify with.
