ONTOGENESIS OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR 



U19 



who did were inclined to interpret the dif- 

 ference as their natural reaction to the "in- 

 nate" sex-determined temperament of the 

 child. 



2. Gender Role Rehearsal 



Role rehearsal stands apart as being of 

 unique importance to the acquisition of role 

 behavior. Needless to say this mode of 

 learning operates hand in hand with paren- 

 tal expectancies and experiential opportuni- 

 ties. 



Gender role rehearsals in childhood occur 

 as pretend operations. Much of the time 

 these rehearsals occur in fantasy only, al- 

 though it is but a short step for a child 

 from fantasy and daydreams to active play. 

 Sears, Maccoby and Levin (1957) point out 

 that such role practice involves more than 

 simple imitation of single aspects of the 

 model's behavior in that the child "takes on 

 the role itself, at least momentarily, with 

 all the feelings, attitudes, values and actions 

 that he attributes to the person who ac- 

 tually occupies the role."*- In this way a 

 child "tries out" many roles, some of which 

 he will keep and others discard. Thus, typi- 

 cally, a child does not lose his sexual iden- 

 tity by switching from pretending to be a 

 nurse or a mother one time and a fireman 

 sometime later. The available evidence 

 strongly suggests, moreover, that it is social 

 endorsement and approbation of any given 

 pattern of identification which governs the 

 final constitution of gender role. A boy, for 

 instance, will therefore come to share many 

 of his mother's attitudes and values while 

 abhorring for himself the use of feminine 

 cosmetics. 



In the absence of the possibility for con- 

 trolled experimental studies in this area 

 with humans, questions as to the determi- 

 nants of gender-specific adolescent phe- 

 nomena have remained matters of con- 

 jecture. The temporal coincidence of bodily 

 maturational changes with the emergence 

 of psychologic signs of heterosexual interest 



'- This mode of learning is usually referred to 

 as identification in the psychiatric literature. Kagan 

 (1958) has attempted an analysis of the concept 

 of identification in an effort to place the concept 

 within the framework of learning theory. In this 

 he defined identification as an accjuired cognitive 

 resjionse within a person which can lead to simi- 

 larities in behavior between a subject and a model. 



has been taken by some as evidence of a 

 common origin in sex-specific instincts or 

 gonadal hormones. As pointed out earlier, 

 there are undeniably physiologic correlates 

 of gender role in that body image and body 

 functioning are an inevitable ingredient of 

 experience. The development of breasts and 

 a more feminine figure in adolescence, for 

 example, increases the likelihood of a girl's 

 being included in teen-age social activities 

 such as dating. Nonetheless, role enactment 

 is preceded by role rehearsal in games of 

 pretend, daydreams, and fantasies during 

 the childhood and pre-adolescent years in 

 the course of which gender role becomes 

 initially structured and, usually, indelibly 

 so. 



The girls and women born with the con- 

 dition known as gonadal dysgenesis provide 

 an unplanned experiment-of-Nature which 

 sheds some light on the origins of gender 

 role fantasies and sexual enactment. This 

 group of patients, reported on earlier by 

 Hampson, Hampson and Money (1955), 

 and now found to have an XO chromatin 

 pattern rather than a typical female XX 

 pattern, is of relevance in that despite nor- 

 mal female external genital appearance 

 their gonads are dysplastic and do not se- 

 crete female sex hormones. A measure of 

 control over the timing of puberty is pos- 

 sible, for at the socially appropriate age, 

 treatment with estrogens is begun so that 

 secondary sexual physical development pro- 

 ceeds along typically feminine lines. 



Table 23.8 summarizes the psychosexual 

 data on 13 such individuals; in four in- 

 stances psychiatric and psychologic studies 

 were obtained both before and after the ad- 

 ministration of estrogens to induce somatic 

 puberty. Without exception all 13 had es- 

 tablished an unequivocally feminine gender 

 role and psychosexual orientation. Also 

 without exception daydreams and fantasies 

 of heterosexual courtship, romance, and 

 sometimes of marriage, motherhood and 

 erotic play had not only occurred but in 

 most cases were a conspicuous feature of 

 their psychosexual expression. The day- 

 dreams and fantasies of these individuals 

 were recognizably feminine in quality and 

 content whether or not treatment with es- 

 trogen had been instituted, although, to be 

 sure, increasing age and experience seemed 



