Gender - Psychodynamic Explanation of Gender Flashcards
What are the key features of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory?
- phallic stage is the key time for gender development
- Oedipus complex in boys (desire for mother and hatred of father)
- Electra complex in girls (resentment of mother and in competition with her)
- resolution of conflict is through identification with the same-sex parent
- identification same-sex parent leads to internalisation
- little Hans case study illustrates the Oedipus complex
What is the key time for gender development?
Freud’s psychodynamic developmental theory explains five psycho-sexual stages: oral, anal, phallic, latent and genital.
Pre-phallic stage: children have no concept of gender identity. They are bisexual in the sense that they are neither masculine nor feminine.
Phallic stage: around 3-6 years, boys experience the Oedipus complex and girls experience the Electra complex.
What is the Oedipus complex?
During the phallic stage, boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother. They want their mother for themselves.
Thus they feel a jealous hatred for their father who has what the boy desires (the mother).
Boys recognise that their father is more powerful. They fear that, on discovering their desire for their mother, their father will castrate them.
What is the Electra complex?
Jung used the term Electra complex to describe the conflict that girls experience. Freud called it penis envy.
During the phallic stage girls feel competition with their mother for their father’s love.
Girls also resent their mother because they believe that she is responsible for their lack of a penis.
How do you resolve the conflict?
For a boy the conflict between his desires and his castration anxiety is resolved when the boy gives up his love for his mother and begins to identify with his father.
Girls acknowledge that they will never have the penis they desire. They substitute this with a desire to have their own children and through this they finally identify with their mother and her gender.
What does identification with the same-sex parent lead to?
Boys adopt the attitudes and values of their father, and girls adopt those of their mother.
Freud referred to this process as internalisation of parents’ identity. This happens all at once.
What was the Little Hans case study?
Little Hans was a 5-year-old boy with a morbid fear of being bitten by a horse. His fear appeared to stem from an incident when he had seen a horse collapse and die in the street.
Freud’s interpretation was that Hans’s fear of horses represented his actual fear of being castrated by his father because of Hans’s love for his mother.
Freud suggested that Hans had transferred his fear of his father onto horses via displacement (a defence mechanism).
What are the weaknesses of the psychodynamic explanation for gender development?
- lack of support for the Oedipus complex
- Freud’s theory does not fully explain female development
- theory relies on a child having different-gender parents
- methods of investigation lack scientific rigour
- theory disagrees with other theories on gender identity
How does the Oedipus complex lack support?
The theory predicts that the more punitive a father is, the more robust his son’s sense of gender identity.
However, Blakemore (2008) found that the reverse was true and that boys with more liberal fathers tend to be more secure in their masculine identity.
This suggests that Freud’s explanation of the role of this complex in gender identity is not borne out in research and therefore it has limited validity.
How does Freud’s theory not fully explain female development?
Freud’s idea of penis envy has been criticised as merely reflecting the era he lived and worked in, where males held so much of the power.
Horney (1967) argued that in fact men’s womb envy was more prominent (a reaction to women’s ability to nurture and sustain life).
This challenges the idea that female gender development was founded on a desire to want to be like men (an androcentric bias).
How does the theory rely on a child having different-gender parents?
The theory assumes that boys and girls require both a male and female parent for normal gender development. It would follow that if they are not both present then we would expect an adverse effect on a child’s gender development.
Golombok et al. (1983) found that children from single-parent families went on to develop normal gender identities and Green (1978) found only 1 out of 37 children who were raised by gay or transsexual parents had a non-typical gender identity.
This suggests that typical gender development does not require two parents of different genders and does not necessarily follow the process that Freud laid out.
How do Freud’s methods of investigation lack scientific rigour?
Freud based his account on unconscious concepts which make the theory untestable, unlike other explanations which are testable and based on objective, verifiable evidence from controlled studies.
According to Popper, this makes Freud’s theory pseudoscientific (not genuine science) as his key ideas cannot be falsified (i.e. proved wrong through scientific testing).
This means that Freud’s theory of gender development is considered of less value than other theories which can be empirically tested.
How does this theory disagree with other theories on gender identity?
Freud claimed that before the age of 6 years the child is bisexual. At the end of the phallic stage the child identifies with the same-sex parent and no further development takes place.
In contrast, for example, Kohlberg described a complex process where children acquire gender identity at around 2 years, gender stability around 4 years and gender constancy at age 6.
This suggests that Freud underestimated the complexity and gradual process that occurs in gender development.
