Sigmund Freud's Perspective On Gender Development

According to Kimmel (2013) Freud asserted when he suggested that boys and girls gender identities are shaped during their developmental years (p. 86). Freud’s perspective on gender development is centered in the concepts of the “id, ego, super-ego, and the external world” (p.87), which interact in different stages since the individual is born. Additionally, Freud’s explains that boys and girls undergo similar stages, oral, denial, and repression, until they reach the critical point, or phallic stage. Kimmel (2013) illustrates that in this last stage that begins a trifurcation into becoming a boy, a girl, or homosexual (p.89). Even though homosexuality was catalogued, according to Freud, as a failure to match the individual’s biological sex with their corresponding parental ideal (normally boys with their parents and girls with their mothers), I find his postulate very innovative, since Freud left behind the biological determinism and started moving towards a gender construction (Kimmel, 2013,p.89).However, I do not agree with Freud’s explanations of sexual drives guiding our behavior, and or that women are incomplete or traumatized for not having a penis. Thus, I understand how this could have initiated many feminist movements that proposed that instead of a “penis envy” (p. 87), perhaps males had “womb envy” (96). …show more content…
Instead, I agree with later theories, such as the cognitive developmental theory. This perspective argues that “children are born more or less gender neutral” (Kimmel, 2013, p.93) and they learn or acquire their identity later in life, during their socialization process. Therefore, in my opinion, not only parental attachment or unconscious sex drive contributes to shape this identity, but a combination of factors, norms, and expectations from our socialization agents, such as schools, media, and other