Physical Body And Genitali The Biological Perspective

It is generally accepted that the major psychological changes take place in childhood. Freud’s view that the three stages of psychosexual development occur during early childhood suggests that “any crisis

Relevant Terminology: Gender identity: refers to an individual’s sense of gender, may be different from one’s assigned gender at birth

Gender is defined as being male or female as defined by roles, social status, and attitude. The perception of oneself and what characterizes gender identity. Included in gender identity is hormone and behavior interaction, along with the examination of psychological, biological, and environmental influences on sexual separation.

The nature side of the debate states that gender is biological. This would explain the strong relationship between the person’s sex and their gender. The theory is that because each sex shares the same physiology and anatomy, they have many psychological traits in common too. In the same way that genetics and hormones determine an individual’s sex, they also determine whether a person will behave in a more feminine or masculine way. Males are born

A person’s sex is determined on the basis of three fundamental human physiognomies, chromosomes (XX for a female and XY for a male), gonads (ovaries for females and testes for males) and the obvious being genitals (vagina for a females and a penis for males). However socially, gender identity is formulated on the grounds of stereotypical roles from both

Apart from the features mentioned above, the core assumption of the psychoanalytic perspective is that a person’s personality depends on childhood experiences. In this psychosexual development theory, Freud assumed that all children go through five stages. These are the oral stage, anal stage, phallic stage, latency stage and genital stage. He believed that a fixation would occur if a child experienced extreme problems or pleasure. (Eysenck, 1994)

The formation of gender identity is not completely understood as it is much more complex than just getting a sperm and egg cell to join; an XX or an XY genotype is only the first part in gender identity. There are many biological, psychological and sociological factors involved. The biological includes chromosomes, gonads, prenatal hormones, internal accessory organs, external genital appearance. The psychological includes assigned gender role and gender identity. The sociological could come from family, mass media and society (Kenyon, PhD, 2006). Sammons (2007) states that biological psychology

Sigmund Freud's "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality", written in 1905, attempted to trace the course of the development of the sexual instinct in human beings from infancy to maturity. This instinct is not simply an animal instinct but is specific to both human culture and the form of conscious and unconscious life we live within it. For Freud sexuality is infinitely complicated and far-reaching in its effects and forms the basis of self-identity and interactions. His Third Essay discusses the transformations of puberty in both males and females. Part four of this essay focuses on the differentiation between male and female sexuality. Freud states in this part that 'as far as the autoerotic and masturbatory manifestations of sexuality

Freud believed during this stage all needs are satisfied orally or through the mouth; for example, eating and drinking. The anal stage takes place during the second year of life. During this stage the battle between control and letting go begins. The phallic stage takes place during the third and fifth years of life. During this stage a child develops a fixation with the genitals. Freud’s psychosexual stages focus on developmental changes in the first 5 years of life and transformation of the id.

This is why my initial decision might have been to do what Dr. Gared recommended: consent to the surgery and raise my baby like a girl. Naturally, if we were to do that, we would rear him or her as a girl, and except him or her to behave like a normal girl. This is a phenomenon known as forced gender socialization, and defined as the tendency for boys and girls to be socialized differently. Indeed, like any mother would, I would dress “her” up like a doll and set up play dates for “her” with the neighbor’s four-year old daughter. I would read “her” bedtime stories about princesses. Family, friends, teachers, and kids at school, would also treat our baby like a girl, thus enforcing gender socialization. However, our child might not grow up like any other little girl. Even if Dr. Gared were to remove the testes, there exists research that proves that “sex chromosomes contribute to sex differences in behavior and brain morphology” (Arnold and McCarthy, 15). This means that my child, with XY chromosomes, could grow up thinking and feeling more like a boy. Pamela Crawford, an intersex child’s adoptive mother says that her “child, now 8 years old, feels more like a boy and wants to be a normal boy” (Sutton, 1). Raised as a girl, the child struggled against her girlhood from the start. This can actually be a rather traumatic experience for intersex children

The passage below from The Feminist Local and Global Theory Perspective Reader suggests that biological terms of male and female are not self-determined but pre-assigned. Once a person is assigned an anatomical category (in this case only being male or female) what they do with this information is how they are pre-determined to act. This cycle perpetuates the reoccurring gender roles that have been inevitably causing both males and females to be oppressed. Consequently, this is unlikely to change since until recently this is how things have always been when it comes to gender and sex. Throughout the reading the topics of both sex and gender are introduced on differently levels of complexity.

The biological perspective on gender, as discussed in class, argue that gender differences come from evolved biological differences that will not vary through time and across culture. Gender is not performed differently because of cultural or societal definitions, but because gender is innately different due to evolution, brain differences and development, and sex hormones. For example, it is argued that slut shaming and values on male promiscuity come from the fitness advantage a man fertilizing as many eggs as possible would have. There has been a lot of research on brain differences between men and women, and also on how different levels of sex hormones would explain men and women’s different levels of aggression, empathy, and competitiveness. Where the biological perspective argues that the way one “does” gender is innate, the sociological perspective argues that gender is performative and based off of socially defined ideas of

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was an influential Austrian psychologist and the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud went on to produce several theories, such as his theory on psychosexual development, which will be the focus of this assignment. Using the case study of a six-year-old patient, I will discuss the key principles of Freud’s theory on psychosexual development. Including, comprehensive definitions of the concepts used, and the stages of Freud’s psychosexual development. Lastly using Freud’s theory, I will explain how the patient’s current behaviour, could impact her behaviour in adulthood.

(Sterling 1993:21) Fausto-Sterling further critiques the biological understandings of gender/sex by believing that sex is socially constructed because nature does not decide on who is seen as a male or female physically. Rather, doctors decide for the children what will be deemed as "normal heterosexual males or females," (Sterling 1993: 22) by the inhabitants of society.

Freud believed that an individual’s personality is formed through five psychosexual developmental stages. The oral stage which is formed in the first year of life is preoccupied with oral activities. The anal stage involves bowel function and control, and occurs during the second year of life. The phallic stage which occurs at approximately the third year to the fifth