Freud Essay, Research Paper

Freud’s Personality Theory

The development of gender roles in deifferent forms of feminsm gives

us a revealing overview of Freud’s personality theory. It is relatively

easy, however, to find oneself torn between openheartedly going

along with Freud’s view of personality as a dynamic system of

psychological energy is a very complex, yet insightful approach to the

development of personality. The nature of the id, ego, and superego,

and the psychosexual stages that these three structures focus on

during a course of one’s development, give a plethora of reasons to

believe in the existence of a critical period in gender development.

Freud’s theory suggests that the way in which the id, ego, and

superego evolve and the way in which they proliferate in the first six

years of a child’s life will influence the child’s emotional attachment to

her/his parent of the same sex and, as consequence, the child’s

gender identification. It is not Freud’s belief about the id, ego, and

superego that raises our eyebrow, but rather his rigid sex-based

generalization of gender development. However, Freud’s

generalization seems to underestimate the impact of genetics and

broader social cues, and to overestimate children’s cognitive

capabilities during the maturing stage and the impact of the

child-parent relationship on children’s gender development.