mckhoii

While I was reading the newet edition of the Synopsis of Psychiatry by Kaplan and Saddock (10th ed), I bumped into something that I really want to share with my peers. Read on..

Sexuality depends on four interrelated psychosexual factors: sexual identity, gender identity, sexual orientation, and sexual behavior. These factors affect personality, growth, development, and functioning. Sexuality is something more than physical sex, coital or noncoital, and something less than all behaviors directed toward attaining pleasure.

Sexual identity is the pattern of a person’s biological sexual characteristics: chromosomes, external genitalia, internal genitalia, hormonal composition, gonads, and secondary sex characteristics. In normal development, these characteristics form a cohesive pattern that leaves a person in no doubt about his or her sex. Gender identity is a person’s sense of maleness or femaleness. Sexual identity and gender identity are interactive. Genetic influences and hormones affect behavior and the environment affects hormonal production and gene expression.

By 2 to 3 years of age, almost everyone has a firm conviction that “I am male” or “I am female.” Yet, even if maleness and femaleness develop normally, persons must still develop a sense of masculinity or femininity.

Gender identity, according to Robert Stoller, “connotes psychological aspects of behavior related to masculinity and femininity.” He considers gender social and sex biological: “Most often the two are relatively congruent, that is, males tend to be manly and females womanly.” But sex and gender can develop in conflicting or even opposite ways.

On my next post. i will be dfferentiating Gender Role and Sexual Orientation.

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