Abstract
Observations of a normal female child from birth to 3 years are selected to illustrate some of the ways early gender identity is established. These and observations of other normal children suggest that meanings conveyed by parents and identification processes contribute to the establishment of significant beginnings of gender identity before the phallic period and before penis envy, castration anxiety, and the oedipal complex contribute their main influence.
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Read in briefer form in a Panel Discussion of the Development of the Child's Sense of his Sexual Identity at the American Psychoanalytic Association Meeting, May 2, 1969.
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Kleeman, J.A. The establishment of core gender identity in normal girls. II. How meanings are conveyed between parent and child in the first 3 years. Arch Sex Behav 1, 117–129 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541056
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01541056