Male Gender Identity: Early Developmental Roots

In 1905 Freud suggested the existence of a sexual life in children that had reverberations on later adult sexual adjustment. Freud soon became aware of “deficiencies and obscurities” in his theory and in his preface to the second edition of the essays on the theory of sexuality, stated the earnest wish “that the book would age rapidly—that what was once new in it may become generally accepted, and that what is imperfect in it may be replaced by something better” (1905, p. 130). Although many of Freud's theories have stood the test of time, there have been many revisions, corrections, and expansions just as Freud had hoped. Perhaps one of the most important changes is the expansion from an exclusive focus on the development of the instinctual drives toward a view that sexuality and aggression are among a number of influential, variable, and interacting developmental lines (A. Freud, 1963). In addition to considering the successive psychosexual developmental stages, we must understand how drives become structured in the context of relationships to important objects, and, how drives, in combination with object relationships, contribute to the emergence of a healthy sense of the self. The developing superego with its moral codes and ideal aspirations, the ego with its synthesizing and organizing functions, and cognitive skills which help the child mentally represent his inner and outer world, understand and test reality and communicate with others, must all be considered in order to fully understand any child's development.

In this paper I shall limit myself to the emergence of gender identity, while taking into consideration other developmental lines