PSYCHOSEXUAL DEVELOPMENT OF WOMEN

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Feminine manners, gestures and ways of interaction are manifested in a girl even before she begins to walk. This not only indicates the early formation of the primary sense of femininity, but is also an early onset of female gender-role identification.

Sexuality as a personality trait is formed in continuous unity with mental development, and this is decisive in the adult sexual realization of a woman.

Psychosexual development is understood as the formation of sexual identity, gender role and sexual orientation.

Psychosexuality is a certain aspect of ontogenesis, closely related to the general biological development of the body, as well as the result of sexual socialization, during which the sexual role and rules of sexual behavior are learned. Different age stages carry different crises of psychosexual development and ways to overcome them.

According to sexologists, psychosexual development of a person begins from the first months of life. In the process of a child's development, there is a transition from the satisfaction of biological needs and primitive emotions of pleasure and displeasure to higher feelings, social consciousness and an assessment of one's abilities are formed. This pattern is also characteristic of psychosexual development.

If the early stages of normal psychosexual development are absent or violated, then gross violations and deformation of sexuality occur, which affect the core of the personality.

Psychosexual development includes: sexual identity (1-7 years old), sexual role (7-13 years old) and psychosexual orientations (12-26 years old).

The formation of sexual self-awareness (1-7 years) in most cases is a deterministic sexual differentiation of the brain in the prenatal period and is reflected in the awareness of the sex of one's own personality and those around, confidence in its irreversibility. However, factors of the microsocial environment also affect the formation of this component. The quality of the child's early contact with the mother is important, which further determines the characteristics of interaction with representatives of the opposite sex. In the process of forming attachment to the mother, the basis for adequate interaction with others is laid, and the absence of a mother's figure leads to a further response to strangers with fear and aggression. In cases of the mother's inability to care and the absence of a "rich emotional conversation" with the child, an internal emptiness is formed, which leads to the girl's detached behavior, the inability to create relationships with others.

When a stereotype of sex-role behavior is formed (7-13 years old), a gender role is chosen that corresponds to the psychophysiological characteristics of the child and the ideals of masculinity / femininity of the microsocial environment.

This stage is characterized by intensive socialization - awareness of oneself as a representative of a certain society, the assimilation of moral and ethical norms of behavior, the importance of a harmonious family microclimate, the emotional and role structure of the family, and patterns of behavior demonstrated by parents increases. The family reproduces a new generation of women by transforming the biological sex into mental and social sex by transferring to the girl the amount of knowledge about the interaction of the sexes, their purpose in various spheres of human life. Due to early identification with important parental figures, the girl assimilates culturally accepted sexual norms and stereotypes, explores sexual behavior, which contributes to the formation of the child's psychological sex, on which the formation of sexuality is based. The relationship of the parents lays the foundation for further interaction with the partner. The lack of clear role differentiation in the family makes it difficult for girls to assimilate sex-role behavior.

The formation of psychosexual orientation (12-26 years old) determines the choice of the object of attraction with its individual characteristics.

From a psychoanalytic point of view, all adolescents go through a "homosexual" period, during which an explosion of sexual energy is directed towards members of the same gender. Freud emphasized the connection of homosexuality with the initial bisexuality of a person. Since adolescent puberty is at an incomplete stage, latent homosexuality can manifest itself both in direct sexual contacts and games, and in passionate friendships with peers of the same gender. The formation of sexual orientation - a system of erotic preferences, attraction to people of the opposite, one or both sexes, is the most difficult problem of the psychosexual development of adolescents. However, in most cases, homosexual contacts of adolescents are experimental in nature, act as an element of acquiring sexual experience and are a means of manifesting excessively close, emotional attachment.

In the psychoanalytic tradition, three main periods of the formation of sexuality are conventionally distinguished: pregenital, latent and genital.

In the third year of life, the girl shows interest in the anatomical differences and the genitals of both sexes. It is this period that psychoanalysts mark as a turning point in the assimilation of the female role, they enclose it in the concept of the "Oedipus complex." In the oedipal phase, the sex-role identity is fixed and the psychosexual phase of the girl's sexual identity begins, when she approaches her father's love, and the mother is perceived as an object of rivalry. A triadic relationship begins, in which the father plays an important role in differentiating the relationship between the girl and the mother, and also, in caring for and recognizing the girl's femininity on the one hand, and establishing certain boundaries in the relationship, on the other.

The positive result of this stage is the girl's identification with her mother. The triadic oedipal configuration of relationships in a girl may remain unresolved until puberty and its further delay leads to irreversible changes in normal sexual orientations for life. The Oedipus situation is also the source of "psychological impotence", which is associated with a woman's intimate-personal space, namely, the difficulty of maintaining a relationship with a sexual object. "Mental impotence" is the result of the influence of infantile complexes, and in adulthood it is realized as the destruction of relationships, dependent love, homosexual tendencies, a tendency towards suffering.

The factors that interfere with the normal passage of the Oedipal stage are the following: the role of the father (who maintains the girl's pride and self-esteem - contributes to her identification with the female “I”, the father who seduces, on the contrary, induces feelings and regressive formations that make identification difficult); feelings towards the mother (guilt for Oedipal desires neutralizes rivalry and leads to the fear of losing her mother and, as a result, the girl can return to symbiotic attachment to her mother, remaining in a state of childish dependence, submissiveness and masochism); the influence of traumatic experience (the father's response to genital impulses can increase oedipal fears and contribute to the repression of sexuality); the primary scene (contains the child's unconscious knowledge of adult sexual relations and influences the acceptance of the female role); transgenerational transmission (neurotic parents raise neurotic children, and an unresolved Oedipus complex of parents is observed in the children’s Oedipus complex); families with one parent (frustration of oedipal love often fosters idealizing fantasies, especially if the father is dead, attachment to the mother increases, and as a result, fear of sexuality arises) family constellations (a sadistic and castrating mother and a soft vulnerable father contribute to the fact that the girl does not identify with mother, remains a child and does not become a woman at all).

NS. Erickson believed that for the formation of a woman's perception of her body and female identity in general, the most significant is the awareness of the presence of the ovaries, uterus and vagina, their reproductive function. This leads to a woman's awareness of her body as an "inner space", which is a basic difference from a man's perception of his body as an "outer space." “Soma,” notes E. Erickson, “is the principle of the structure of an organism that lives its life cycle. But a woman's Soma is not only about what is under her skin, or variations in her appearance due to changes in clothing styles. For a woman, inner space can be a source of despair and at the same time it is a condition for her realization. Emptiness, - writes E. Erickson, - for a woman - death. Thus, according to E. Erickson, the female body is, first of all, the inner space associated with motherhood.

During the latency period with the development of social relations, the girl comes into contact with large groups of peers and finds more opportunities in the search for new objects for idealization and identification. A girl's masculine behavior during this period may indicate the acquisition of masculine features, or be compensation for a weak and underestimated sense of femininity.

Adolescence is associated with changes in body structure and secondary sex characteristics. The body image attracts attention with the onset of menarche, the girl gets the idea that she is no longer a child and discovers an adult body. Menstruation can cause both pride and feelings of shame, helplessness, and anxiety due to the stress of not being able to manage them. Puberty qualitatively changes the structure of sexual self-awareness, since for the first time not only the sexual, but also the sexual identity of a woman, including her sexual orientations, appears and is consolidated.

According to the periodization of the psychosexual development of Freud's personality, in the pubertal period, the genital stage begins, therefore libido is concentrated on the genitals, puberty sets in, heterosexual intimate relationships are built.

The genital character is an ideal personality type and is characterized by maturity, responsibility in social and sexual relations, the ability to experience pleasure in heterosexual love. The reasons for the inaccessibility of the genius stage is the fixation of libido at the previous stages of development, due to traumatic experience.

Biological changes also enhance the girl's sex drive. During this period, intensified masturbation, sexual exploration accompanied by fear, shame and guilt are actualized, curiosity and fantasies about sexual intercourse often lead to anxiety, and fantasies of pain and damage from intercourse are urgent.

Mature sexuality is associated with sexual-partner orientation and requires the search for new means of interaction with others, especially with potential lovers. The adolescent girl's path to resolving her conflicts over object choice is through the "ego ideal." Infantile images of oneself and the object must be revised and de-idealized. Narcissistic pleasure can be achieved through identification with the "ego ideal" as the sense of femininity is assimilated and with it a heterosexual orientation is formed.

Literature:

1. General sexopathology: a guide for doctors / ed. G. S. Vasilchenko. –– M.: Medicine, 2005. –– 512 p.

2. Freud Z. Essays on the psychology of sexuality / Sigmund Freud. –– M.: Potpourri, 2008. –– 480 p.

3. Erickson E. Identity: youth, crisis: trans. from English / Eric Erickson. –– M.: Progress, 1996. –– 342 p.