Psychodynamic is an approach to psychology that states that human behavior, emotions and feelings happen as a result of unconscious early experience in childhood. It states that all human behavior has a cause which is mostly unconscious. This paper will discuss different ways in which Freud’s theory of psychodynamic model is considered sexist and used in reinforcing gender stereotypes.

Freud’s theory is obviously sexually unbalanced this is especially shown in his emphasis on the Conflict known as Oedipal in boys. Due to the fact that Freud himself was male, and at that particular time he was writing, the cultural bias common in Victorian society meant that women were considered less significant than men to the extent of being compared to children.. Nonetheless, this limits the relevance of this approach to understanding the development of mental disorders in women (Hare, 1988).

Freud, throughout his career proposed theories that had no clinical evidence to support them. Later he came to see most of these theories as established fact without intervening tangible evidence. Throughout his whole life, Freud remained doubtful of the absolute validity of his theories on women. Freud once came clean and admitted to his friend Marie Bonaparte that he did not quite understand the nature of women: “The great question that has never been answered and which I have not yet been able to answer despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul is “what does a woman want? This statement only clearly demonstrates Freud’s theory as sexist. He without doubt, regarded women not only as quite different from men, but as enigmas, incomprehensible to the male gender (Freud, 1884).

References

Freud, S. (1884). Psychodynamic Theories: psychoanalysis 2(16).

Hare, M., Marecek, J. & Rachel T. (1988). The meaning of difference: Gender theory, postmodernism, and psychology, Jeanne American Psychologist, Vol 43(6), 455-464.