FREE ESSAY ON FREUD'S PERSONALITY THEORY

FREUD'S PERSONALITY THEORY

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.