1 Psychology 320: Gender Psychology Lecture 17

2 Announcements 1. The grades for the midterm exam are now available on the course website. I scaled the grades up by approximately 3%, resulting in a mean score of 66% (SD=16, range=23%-94%) on the exam. Please see David to review your multiple choice responses and definitions, and Jill to review your short answer responses. 2. Students who are absent from class and/or exams due to illness are now required by the University to indicate their absence using the online reporting system available through the Student Service Centre.

3 1. How does psychodynamic theory explain gender development? Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Differences:

4 How does psychodynamic theory explain gender development? Sigmund Freud proposed psychodynamic theory in the late 19 th century, when pervasive social thought maintained that females were inferior to males. In his theory, Freud attempted to explain personality development and account for female inferiority.

5 Among the primary concepts that Freud proposed are: The Topographical Model of the Mind: Maintains that the mind is comprised of three components—the conscious, the preconscious, and the unconscious. The Structural Model of Personality: Maintains that personality is comprised of three components—the id, the ego, and the superego. The Stage Theory of Psychosexual Development: Maintains that personality develops in discrete stages, largely involving events in the unconscious component of the mind.

6  in each of the first 3 stages, we are confronted by an unconscious conflict that revolves around our need to obtain sexual gratification.  in each of the five stages, an erogenous zone becomes the focal point of attention through which we obtain sexual gratification. The Stage Theory of Psychosexual Development assumes that:  personality development occurs in 5 stages.

7  fixation occurs when the conflict associated with a specific stage is not well resolved.  successful personality development occurs when individuals navigate through the 5 stages without becoming fixated at any one stage.

8  individuals who become fixated at different stages develop different personality characteristics.  fixation at one stage makes it more difficult to resolve conflicts at subsequent stages.  gender differences emerge between males and females in the third stage.

9 1. Oral Stage  0 – 18 months.  Erogenous zone: Mouth.  Sexual impulses are largely expressed through nursing at the mother’s breast. The stages of psychosexual development that Freud proposed are:

10 Freud (1916/1961) wrote: “Sucking at the mother’s breast is the starting point of the whole of sexual life, the unmatched prototype of every later sexual satisfaction, to which fantasy often enough returns in times of need. This sucking involves making the mother’s breast the object of the sexual instinct. I can give you no idea of the important bearing of this first object upon the choice of every later object, of the profound effects it has in its transformations and substitutions in even the remotest regions of our sexual life.”

11  Main conflict at this stage occurs when the infant is weaned from the breast.  Fixation occurs if the infant is prematurely weaned or experiences trauma while being weaned.  Two personality types result from fixation at this stage: the oral-incorporative character and the oral sadistic character.

12 1. How does psychodynamic theory explain gender development? Psychodynamic Explanations of Gender Differences: