University College of London and Anna Freud Centre

MSc in Psychoanalytic Developmental Psychology

PSYCGP25: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Child Development Module 3

Tutor: Inge Pretorius

Student Candidate Number: NXKL2

Date of Submission: 05 July 2017

Essay Title:

“Within classical psychoanalysis, it was thought that the establishment of gender

identity was more fraught and difficult for girls than for boys. Critically evaluate

Tyson and Tyson’s (1990) assertion that boys’ gender identity formation is more

complex than that of girls”

Word Count: 2977.

Introduction

The concept of gender identity is one relatively new to the theory of psychoanalysis

and it has been incorporated as a field of study due to the dialogue that

psychoanalytic theory has stablished with some lines of thought from the twentieth

century onwards, such as feminism. The struggle women have experienced across

history to demand equality of rights in a world dominated by men, inspired such

elemental questions around the position women were forced to adopt, because of

their biological condition of being born as females. The philosophical influence of

these movements implied a new understanding of sexes and their roles in society,

proposing sex and gender as different concepts. In 1949, Simone De Beauvoir said

in her book “The Second Sex”: “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman”

implying that gender is a part of identity one gradually acquires and not something

tied to the sex one is designated at birth. Despite Freud’s visionary ideas, he was

in some senses a product of his generation and within his theory of human

development, the concept of gender is absent. Freud would posit that sexual

identity has to do with a process of triangulation and identification described in his

Oedipus complex, where the sexual identity one develops is closely related with

one’s sexual position, meaning one’s object choice. In his theory, Freud came to

state that given the nature of this complex, achieving a stable sexual identity would

be more of a struggle for girls than for boys. However, contemporary

psychoanalytical theory by the hand of Tyson and Tyson (1990) have re-dressed

the concept of gender and consequently formulated a theory around the

development of gender identity. Under this more recent perspective, the task of
developing a stable gender identity is thought to be a harder challenge for boys

than for girls, contrary to what Freud stated. This essay will describe both the

classical psychoanalytic perspective on this matter as well as the more

contemporary view and critically evaluate both assertions on whether gender

identity formation represents a more difficult process for either gender.

Classical psychoanalysis

The Oedipus Complex described by Freud, represents a central organizer of

mental life in psychoanalytic theory. There is no one text of Freud dedicated solely

to the Complex but more of a development of his ideas during the course of his

different works. In his “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality” (1905/1949),

Freud shared his thoughts on infantile sexuality but it was not until 1910 that Freud

gave the name of Oedipus Complex to this theory, appearing as a concept for the

first time in his work “A Special Type of Choice of Object Made by Men”.

According to Freud’s Oedipus complex, boys are born into an undifferentiated

relationship with their mother and develop strong feelings of love for her. When the

young boy enters what Freud called the “phallic phase”, he attributes an important

value to his penis. This makes him fear its loss when facing anatomical difference,

and the reality dawns on him that girls do not possess one. Boys then theorise girls

may have lost it due to castration and for that to have happened, someone had to

castrate them. Freud (1905/1949) states that the young boy comes to understand

that his father has a stronger sexual organ and that in fact his mother does not

belong to him but to his father. In this way the father becomes a rival, however the
boy fears he will be punished by his father for desiring his wife, and this may lead

to his father castrating him. It is this castration anxiety that will force the young boy

to internalise the prohibition of incest and understand he will have to wait, become

bigger and stronger, and look for a female partner outside of his own family.

According to Freud (1905/1949), girls are also born with a desire for their mothers

and when facing the fact that they have been born without a penis or castrated,

they turn against her for giving them a damaged body, showing what Freud called

“penis envy” (1908/1963) to denote the wish of being a boy when facing anatomical

difference. This forces the young girl to turn to her father who owns a phallus and

make a rival out of her mother. The little girl then changes her love object from the

mother to the father who owns a penis to give to her, wishing that he can repair the

error her mother made. When she realises this is not possible she recognises her

castration, gives up the desire for a penis and by displacement she begins wishing

to have a baby with her father. For this matter she will change the erotogenic zone

as well, from the clitoris to the vagina, during adolescence as a container for the

wished for penis.

For Freud the threat of castration means the entry into the Oedipus complex for

girls and its dissolution for boys. This, according to Freud, has significant

differences for each sex in them building the structure of their personality, by the

process of formation of their Superego:

“In girls the motive for the demolition of the Oedipus Complex is lacking. Castration

has already had its effects (…) it maybe slowly abandoned or dealt with by
repression, or its effects may persist far into women´s normal mental life. I cannot

evade the notion that for women the level of what is ethically normal is different

from what it is in men” (Freud, 1925/1962b, p. 257).

The Oedipal crisis means for both boys and girls the impossible wish to be both

sexes and possess both parents. This constitutes the base for the theory of a

constitutional bisexuality which was introduced to psychoanalytic theory by Freud

in 1905, under the influence of his friend Fliess. Development means loss and

mourning because both sexes are forced to give up this wish and choose a path to

continue their development. In the case of boys they need to accept the taboo of

incest and let of go their wishes for mother, identify with father and eventually look

for non-related women as sexual objects. In the case of girls, they also need to let

go of mother and change the sex of their love object to a male one, having now to

identify with the parent they first desired. For Freud the process girls have to go

through seems more difficult because they can’t entirely internalize the rules of

society and therefore developed a less stable superego than boys, also having to

give up their object and not reaching a stable sexual identity until puberty when

they manage to switch their erotogenic zone from the penis’ equivalent, the clitoris,

to the feminine one, the vagina:

“A man, after all, has only one leading sexual zone, one sexual organ, whereas a

woman has two: the vagina—the female organ proper—and the clitoris, which is

analogous to the male organ. We believe we are justified in assuming that for

many years the vagina is virtually non-existent and possibly does not produce
sensations until puberty. It is true that an increasing number of observers report

that vaginal impulses are present even in these early years. In women, therefore

[my italics], the main genital occurrences of childhood must take place in relation to

the clitoris” (Freud, 1931/1961, p. 228)

Different from boys, girls have to change their desire from the female parent to the

male parent and then search outside the family. In an article entitled “Female

Sexuality” (1931/1961), Freud reaffirmed what he had said about the importance of

the girl’s original tie to her mother and the resultant difficulty she has in changing

her object and in moving from the mother to the father in the course of her

psychosexual development:

“In the case of a male, his mother becomes his first love-object as a result of her

feeding him and looking after him, and she remains so until she is replaced by

someone who resembles her or is derived from her. A female's first object, too,

must be her mother: the primary conditions for a choice of object are, of course,

the same for all children. But at the end of her development, her father—a man—

should have become her new love-object. In other words, to the change in her own

sex there must correspond a change in the sex of her object. The new problems

that now require investigating are in what way this change takes place, how

radically or how incompletely it is carried out, and what the different possibilities

are which present themselves in the course of this development” (p. 228)
Post-Freudian perspectives and Contemporary psychoanalysis

One of the main criticisms of Freud’s theory on sexual development and

identification is its lack of depth in understanding female sexuality and its phallic

monism. This denotes the fact that it is mainly focused around the penis and it

does not recognise femininity as a constitution in itself, but as one built in

opposition to masculinity. Female Psychoanalysts spurred by the tides of feminism

such as Karen Horney and Melanie Klein, proposed different perspectives to

Freud’s Oedipus Complex. The latter argued that young children are in fact aware

of the presence of the vagina and just like castration complex appears in little girls,

so does the femininity complex in boys saying that for both “there is at bottom the

frustrated desire for a special organ” (1928). At the same time, Klein (1928) stated

the presence of a femininity phase for both boys and girls where they, as a reaction

to maternal castration, turn to the father in their normal development.

More contemporary perspectives in psychoanalytic theory have included the notion

of gender as a concept and developed a theory on gender identity. Stoller (1968a,

1976) has defined gender identity as a combination of masculinity and femininity,

determined by a wide array of biological, psychological, social and cultural factors.

Tyson and Tyson (1990) when approaching their theory on gender identity

development, choose to follow Stoller in his preference for a “less ambiguous term

(…) rather than sexual identity” (p. 249). They state that the term sex refers to a

biological designation, male or female; while gender refers to a “psychological

configuration that combines and integrates personal identity and biological sex,

and to which object relations, superego ideals, and cultural influences make

significant contributions” (p. 249)

Tyson and Tyson (1990) understand gender identity as composed by three

aspects. These are Core Gender Identity, Gender Role Identity and Sexual Partner

Orientation.

Core Gender Identity is defined as the “most primitive, conscious and unconscious,

sense of belonging to one sex and not the other” (p. 250) and it is thought to start

as a biological force in the fetus including one’s physical body upon which sex

assignment is made and how parents handle that body according to social

conventions on male or female sex.

Gender Role Identity relates to a “gender-based patterning of conscious and

unconscious interactions with other people” (p. 254) and is thought to be built upon

subtle early interactions with parents and how they relate to their own gender.

Tyson and Tyson (1982) stress the importance of cognitive maturation in order for

the child to be able to have a sense of “perceive and label biological givens” (p.

62). Also, the authors state that social and cultural stereotypes of gender roles can

influence the development of Gender Role Identity.

The third component of Gender Identity according to Tyson and Tyson (1982) is

Sexual Partner Orientation. This one relates to one’s “preferred sex of the love

object” (p. 62) and it is thought to be rooted in preoedipal and oedipal object

relations and to be truly stablished in adolescence, when these object relations are

reworked.

For both boys and girls, the establishment of a core gender identity begins with sex

assignment. In the case of boys, this is followed by the discovery of the penis

around the latter part of the first year of life, becoming eventually aware of

anatomical difference due to his interest in urinary functioning and genital pleasure.
This is often when castration anxiety appears, giving evidence of an established

core gender identity.

In order for the little boy to enter the oedipal situation and develop a heterosexual

sexual partner orientation, Tyson and Tyson (1982) believe that first he needs to

achieve a fuller assumption of a male gender role during the early phallic phase,

where the father will have a fundamental part. The father has the mission of

“breaking the symbiotic tie between mother and son, encouraging masculine

attitudes” (p. 64). During this phase, the boy often shows fascination with his

father’s urinary stream, given that the boy has a libidinal investment on his own

genitals. The father teaches the little boy how to urinate in an upright position

which helps him achieve bladder and bowel control and more autonomy. This

identification with the father is considered the first step in the boy’s assumption of a

male gender role. Just like Freud, Tyson and Tyson (1982) stress the little boy’s

need to appreciate his penis enough to fear its loss, in order for him to establish a

male gender identity. For these authors, the boy’s struggle is in his necessary dis-

identification with his mother who is for both genders, the first love object and

source of identification. They describe the identification with the ideal father during

the anal phase as the mode of entry to the Oedipus Complex, understanding that

the little boy will then have to sort out his bisexual conflict by appreciating the

father’s role in procreation and wishing to have babies like mother as a male, using

the elements of femininity to be “sensitive and nurturing to his wife and children”

(p.70).

In the case of girls, the development of a stable feminine gender identity will largely

be influenced by her mother’s experience of her own femininity. According to

Tyson and Tyson (1982) the little girl starts building a differentiated body image not

through the realization of a specific organ but through “oral, anal, urethral and

genital activities in the context of reciprocity with the mother” (p. 73). These authors

state that by the time the little girl realizes anatomical difference, “penis envy”,

differently from Freud’s perspective, is thought to be not a necessarily expected

reaction but one that is often related to a mother-daughter relationship that has not

facilitated a healthy identification with feminine qualities:

“The girl wishes to be admired for her physical skills, her agility and, in

identification with mother, for her feminine attractiveness as her female ego ideal

becomes increasingly elaborated. An admiring response from important objects

helps reinforce the girl’s confidence in her body functioning and encourage pride in

her femininity” (Tyson and Tyson, 1982, p. 76.)

In fact, for Tyson and Tyson (1982) a “lack of well-being and lowered self-esteem

associated with penis envy in some girls reflects (…) a pre-phallic disturbance in

object relations” (p.76). In order for the little girl to face the oedipal situation and

wish her father, she needs to give up the phallic identification and rivalry with him

through identification with her mother as an ego ideal. Under this influence, the

little girl will direct libidinal attention to her father.

Tyson and Tyson (1982) declare that “penis envy” can no longer be regarded as

the major organizer of femininity but that in fact, feminine personality organization

find its origins in early mother-ego ideal identification. In this sense, the little girl,

just as the little boy, needs to cope with the ambivalence that the oedipal situation

brings, which is making a rival of a loved parent and fearing the loss of their

affection. However, for these authors, girls will never need to dis-identify from their
primary love object like boys will, which makes gender identity development a

harder task for the latter.

Conclusion

This essay has delineated the classical psychoanalytic perspective on sexual

identity development using Freud’s theory on his Oedipus Complex. According to

this theory, the task of establishing a stable sexual identity would be a harder one

for girls than for boys given that girls need to turn from a female love object to a

male one. This essay then addressed how psychoanalysis built a dialogue with

feminism, achieving a new understanding of sexual identity as a construct of many

factors rather than a given condition from birth, with the incorporation of the

concept of “Gender”. To draw some thoughts on this more contemporary

perspective, the work of Tyson and Tyson (1982) was considered. These authors

developed a theory around Gender Identity Development, composed by three

areas: Core Gender Identity, Gender Role Identity and Sexual Partner Orientation.

According to these authors, building a stable gender identity would be a harder

task for boys than for girls, given that boys would need to dis-identify from their

mother to assume a male role. Both theoretical approaches have points of

agreement and disagreement. The contemporary perspective can be considered

as one that remains mostly faithful to the classical understanding but additionally

incorporates newer perspectives that reflect the current socio-historic context, and

more diverse factors that add to the complexity and depth of psychoanalytic theory.

From this perspective, it is possible to affirm that for Freud a main concern when

thinking about building a sense of sexual identity, is the expected love object
choice or, in Tyson and Tyson’s (1982) words, one’s sexual partner orientation. For

latter authors however, it seems that a fundamental sphere of gender identity is

Gender Identity Role, being a necessary condition to assume one first in order for

everyone to enter the Oedipal situation and establish a sexual partner orientation.

It seems to be that this difference between both theories is the source of their

understanding and disagreement on whether this developmental process is more

difficult for boys or girls.

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