Psychodynamic approach

Pre-phallic and phallic children

• Pre-phallic- bisexual, don’t display masculine or feminine stage

• Phallic- development is an unconscious process occurring at phallic stage (3-6yrs)

Oedipus complex - occurs as phallic stage

• boy desires mum- age of 4 boy is aware of his sexuality and desires his mums sole attention

• boy sees dad as rival for mums love, wishing he was dead- wish creates anxiety, fear of castratrion which is repressed

• resolved as boy identifies with dad through indentification- boy internalises dads gender identity and takes in his own gender identity

• This gender identity & identification causes masculine behaviour as boy takes attitudes of dad

Electra complex

• girl initially attracted to mum but ends as finds out she doesn’t have a penis- girl blames mum for own lack of penis, believe she was castrated so has penis envy

• Girls sexual desires transfers to dad

• Complex resolves when girl convert penis envy to wish for a baby, reducing her anger to mum allowing her to identify with mum and take in gender behaviour

Psychodynamic approach

• gender behaviour develops due to unconscious thought processes

• Persons sexuality develops during psychosexual stages, gender development occurs when they resolve phallic stage

Strength- research support from Little Hans

• Little hans had phobia of horses & Freud interpreted this phobia as reflecting his fear of his father into horses

• Fits oedipus complex- hans fearful of dad castrating him for desiring his mum

• Hans fearful that when he would aks mum to touch his pensi she could chop it off- displaces fear onto fear of being asked to touch a horse

• Shows he was actually fearful of dad and nit horses- deflection of his oedipus complex

• BUT issues in study- not generalisable, subjective, meaning it lacks credibility for supporting the oedipus complex for gender development

Limitation- gender bias

• electra complex is male centred- ides of penis envy seen as reflection of Freud content with male power in male dominated society - androcentric

• Bias due to females never having a fully developed gender identity due to fact be assumed their identification with same sex parent is less strof

Limitation- socially sensitive

• Freud idea lacks predictive validity as doesn’t take into account changing diverse families in modern day

• His idea revolves around traditional nuclear families where each child will have same sex parent to identify and internalise with

• Creates argument that diff family structures like lone parent families won’t fulfill their duty in aiding gender development- socially sensutive to their family types as blames them for faults in their child’s gender development

• Freud idea was at the time of nuclear families being norm so lacks predictive validity