1414 



HORMONAL REGULATION OF BEHAVIOR 



somatic basis other than the highly in- 

 nervated and erotically sensitive areas of 

 the body. As an alternative to a drive con- 

 cept some will find it preferable to say 

 simply that the erotically sensitive parts of 

 the human body can be used and stimulated 

 by oneself or another person and that dur- 

 ing the process of psychologic growth and 

 development erotic sensations become firmly 

 associated with and inextricably a part of 

 adult gender role. 



B. THE INFLUENCE OF THE PHYSICAL SEX 



VARIABLES ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF 



GENDER role: BODY IMAGE 



To say that a person's gender role is a 

 correlation of the kind of learning experi- 

 ences encountered and transacted is not to 

 endorse an oversimplified version of social 

 and environmental determinism. It is read- 

 ily seen that in a very real sense the somatic 

 variables of sex constitute an important 

 part of a person's environment. 



For example, although hormonal func- 

 tioning does not directly or automatically 

 determine maleness or femaleness of gender 

 role an important relationship is involved, 

 namely, the effect of hormones on body 

 morphology and their sensitizing influence 

 on genital sensory structures. Before birth 

 hormonal functioning has a major role to 

 play in embryonic differentiation of both 

 the internal and external genital structures. 

 When a child is born, needless to say, it is 

 the morphology of the external genitalia 

 which dictates or guides the assignment of 

 sexual status. Although we have found that 

 most children can overcome the quandary 

 of anomalous or ambiguous genital appear- 

 ance and grow up with a sexual orientation 

 appropriate to the sex in which they were 

 reared, it is by no means true that they do 

 so without difficulty or with complete suc- 

 cess. Broadly speaking, the more pro- 

 nounced and obvious the anomaly the 

 greater the concomitant feelings of bashful- 

 ness, shame, and differentness with which 

 the person must contend. Some children, in 

 the face of ambiguous genital appearance, 

 may privately construe that an error has 

 been made; they are then able to adapt to 

 a psychosexual orientation appropriate to 

 their assigned sex only by paying the pen- 

 alty of one or another kind of psychologic 



symptomatology. Parents, too, react to their 

 child's ambiguous genital development with 

 concerns and worries about the correctness 

 of the child's sexual identity thus impor- 

 tantly structuring the family environment 

 in which gender learning has its experiential 

 origins. 



The sex hormones also play an important 

 role at puberty in establishing the secondary 

 sexual characteristics of the body. Ordinar- 

 ily the transition from prepuberty to adoles- 

 cence is a gradual one that occurs in the 

 setting of pubertal physical changes and 

 social interaction. A child's anticipation of 

 being grown up and of being considered 

 grown up by others directs attention to body 

 appearance. More than any other indicator 

 the physical changes at puberty indicate to 

 other people that this person is now ready 

 for the social transactions of adolescence. 

 Thus prepubertal children usually antici- 

 pate eagerly the first signs of breast devel- 

 opment, of beard growth or voice change, as 

 evidence that they are growing up, and they 

 compare their progress with that of their 

 age-mates. The appearance of menses in 

 girls and nocturnal emissions in boys are 

 important private signs which enhance a 

 child's sense of confidence in his or her mas- 

 culinity or femininity. In the absence of vis- 

 ible bodily signs of maturity the youngster 

 suffers not only in lowered self-esteem but 

 equally important is excluded by his con- 

 temporaries from a host of adolescent ac- 

 tivities which are indispensable to psycho- 

 logic and social maturation. Secondary 

 sexual development may, however, be incon- 

 gruous (as in hyperadrenocortical female 

 hermaphrodites), precocious (as in cases of 

 idiopathic sexual precocity), or delayed (as 

 in hypogonadal males and girls with gon- 

 adal dysgenesis). Incongruity, precocity, 

 and delay in secondary sexual development 

 inevitably have important effects psycho- 

 logically. The more publicly evident the in- 

 congruity the more distressing the person 

 finds it. Thus hirsute girls and women with 

 hyperadrenocorticism have almost invari- 

 ably reported to us that they would, more 

 than anything else like to be rid of their 

 unfeminine-looking body hair; their hyper- 

 plastic clitoris and deep voice assumed a 

 secondary importance beside the hirsutism. 

 Precocious appearance of the hormonally 



