Psychoanalytic Approaches and Gender

Psychoanalytic theory, beginning with Sigmund Freud’s classical psychoanalysis, has had a long-standing and somewhat controversial history with the concept of gender. Freud’s original conceptualizations of gender development continue to be critiqued and revised by several of the more contemporary psychoanalytic schools of thought. This entry includes a brief overview of the universal elements in psychoanalytic theory and the foundations of Freud’s concept of gender. It then reviews post-Freudian contributions and critiques offered by feminist psychoanalytic theory and the object relations and relational psychoanalytic schools of thought, and it concludes with future directions for the field.