Psychodynamic explanation of gender development

Key terms

Oedipus complex - Freud’s explanation of how a boy resolves his love for his mother and feelings of rivalry towards his father by identifying with his father.

Electra complex - A term proposed by the neo-Freudian Carl Jung which refers to a process similar to the Oedipus complex. In girls, an attraction to and ency of their father is resolved through identification with their mother.

Identification - A desire to be associated with a particular person or group often because they posses certain desirable characteristics.

Internalisation - An individual adopts the attitudes and/or behaviour of another.

insert image

Freud’s psychoanalytic theory

Pre-phallic children

Freud’s general developmental theory sees children pass through 5 psychosexual stages that begin with the oral stage and end with the genital stage around the time of puberty. The third of these stages - the phallic stage - is when gender development occurs. Prior to reaching the phallic stage, which occurs between the ages of 3 and 6, children have no concept of gender identity. Freud describe pre-phallic children as bisexual in the sense that they are neither masculine nor feminine. In the phallic stage, the focus of pleasure for the child switches to the genitals, and it is within this stage that children experience the Oedipus complex or the Electra complex. These stages are crucial in the formation of gender identity.

Oedipus complex

In the phallic stage, boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother. They harbour a jealous and murderous hatred for their father who stands in the way of the boy possessing his mother. However, the boy also recognises that his father is more powerful than he is and fears he may be castrated by his father for his feelings towards his mother (castration anxiety) To resolve this conflict, the boy gives up his love for his mother and begins to identify with his father (identification with the aggressor)

Electra complex

At the same age, girls experience penis envy, seeing themselves and their mother as being in competition for their father’s love. Girls develop a double-resentment towards their mother. Firstly, the mother is a love rival standing in the way of the father and secondly the girls blame the mother for their lack of penis (believing that mother castrated her daughter’s when the mother castrated her own) Freud was much less clear on the process in girls and no record of him actually using this term however the concept came from Carl Jung who suggested that girls, over time, come to accept tat they will never have a penis and substitute penis envy for the desire to have children, identifying with their mothers as a result.

Identification and Internalisation

The crux of Freud’s theory is that children of both sexes identify (identification) with the same-sex parents as a means of resolving their respective complexes. Boys adopt the attitudes and values of their father, and girls adopt those of the mother. This involves children taking on board the gender identity of the same-sex parent, a process Freud referred to as internalisation. Both boys and girls receive a second hand gender identity all at once at the end of the phallic stage.

Little Hans

Freud’s evidence for the existence of the Oedipus complex was limited but he present the case of Little Hans. Hans ws a 5 year old boy with a morbid fear of being bitten by a horse. Hans’ fear appeared to have stemmed from an incident when he had seen a horse collapse and die in a street. However, Freud’s interpretation was that Hans’ fear of being bitten represented his fear of castration (by his father because of Hans’ love for his mother) Freud suggested that Hans had transferred his fear of his father onto horses via the unconscious defence mechanism of displacement.

Evaluation

Research does not support the Oedipus complex

Many commentators have criticised Freud’s concept of the Oedipus complex and the use of the Little Hans case study particularly as support for the idea. As well as this, Freud’s theory implies that sons of very punitive and harsh fathers should go on to develop a more robust sense of gender identity than other boys because higher levels of anxiety should produce stronger identification with the aggressor. However, this is not supported by evidence and in fact the reverse would seem to be true: that boys with more liberal fathers tend to be more secure in their masculine identity. (Blakemore and Hill 2000)

Inadequate account of female development

Although Freud wrote extensively about the Oedipus complex, much of the theorising on girls’ parallel development was undertaken by Carl Jung, one of Freud’s contemporaries. Freud admitted that women were a mystery to him and notion of penis envy has been criticized as reflecting the patriarchal Victorian era within which he lived and worked. The feminist psychoanalyst Karen Horney argues that a more powerful emotion than penis envy is the male experience of ‘womb envy’ - a reaction to women’s ability to nurture and sustain life. Horney argued that penis envy was a cultural concept, rather than an innate trait, and challenged the idea the female gender development was founded on a desire to want to be like men - an androcentric assumption.

What about non-nuclear families?

Freud’s theory relies on the child having two parents of different gender so they are able to manage the Oedipus or Electra complex effectively. It is logical to assume from the conclusions Freud drew that being raised in a non-nuclear family would have an adverse affect on a child’s gender development. Evidence does not support this assumption, though. For example, Susan Golombok et al (1983) demonstrated two children from single-parent families went on to develop normal gender identities. Similarly, Richard Green (1978) studied a sample of 37 children who were raised by gay or transgender parents, and discovered that only one had a gender identity that was described as ‘non-typical’

Lack of scientific rigour

Freud has often been criticised for the lack of rigour in his methods and the fact that many of the concepts he refers to in his account of gender development, because of their unconscious nature, are untestable. This contrasts sharply with other explanations of gender that are based on objective, verifiable evidence derived from controlled lab studies, like biological approach. According to philosopher of science Karl Popper (1959), this makes Freud’s theory pseudoscientific (not genuine science) as his key ideas cannot be falsified.

Disagreement over gender identity