Discuss freud’s psychoanalytic theory of gender development PDF

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Discuss Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of gender development (16 marks)

Freud’s general developmental theory sees children pass through five psychosexual stages that begins with the oral stage and ends with the genital stage. The third of these three 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 described prephallic 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 its within this stage that children experience either the Oedipus or Electra complex. The Oedipus complex refers to 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. In the phallic stage, boys develop incestuous feelings towards their mother and 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 the conflict, the boy gives up his love for his mother and begins to identify with his father. Girls also 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 as she acts as a love rival standing in the way of the father, and secondly, girls blame the mother for their lack of penis (girls over time, come to accept that they will never have a penis and substitute penis envy for the desire to have children). Children of both sexes identity (identification) with the same-sex parent as a means of resolving their respective complexes. Boys adopt the attitude and values of their father, and girls adopt those of their mother. This involves children taking on board the gender identity of the same-sex parent, a process Freud referred to as internalisation. Little Hans was a 5-year-old boy with a morbid fear of being bitten by a horse. Han’s fear appeared to have stemmed for an incident where he had seen a horse collapse and die in the street. However, Freud’s interpretation was that Hans’ fear of being bitten represented his fear of castration (by his father). Freud suggested that

Hans had transferred his fear of his father onto horses via the unconscious defence mechanism of displacement.

It could be argued that Freud’s theories reflect the prevailing views of the time in which they were developed. For example, the notion of penis envy implies that women are inferior to men, which is not an idea with which many people would now agree. Furthermore, the whole theory relies heavily on constructs whose existence is difficult or impossible to test directly (the unconscious mind, defence mechanisms etc.).

Many would argue that this makes the theory unscientific, as it is impossible to obtain evidence that could directly test it.

Although Freud wrote extensively about the Oedipus complex, much of the theorising on girls’ parallel development (Electra) was undertaken by Carl Jung, one of his contemporaries. Freud admitted that women were a mystery to him and his notion of penis envy has been Freud argued that gender identity is formed at the end of the phallic stage (6), when the criticised as reflecting the patriarchal Victorian era within which he lived and worked. child identifies with the same sex parent. Indeed, 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 Prior toand this,sustain the child described as bisexual, neither nor female. sees nurture life.isHorney argued that penis envy male (like womb envy) Freud was a also cultural no further development of thetrait, child’s beyond of the Oedipus or concept, rather than an innate andidentity challenged thethe idearesolution that female gender Electra Complex. This is in contrast to other explanations of gender development, such as development was founded on a desire to want to be like men – an androcentric Kohlberg’s theory which suggests that the child’s concept of gender develops gradually – assumption. across a sequence of stages which coincide with an increase in the child’s cognitive capacity....