ABSTRACT
Psychodynamic approaches to atypical gender development in the male tend to look to the specific role of the mother in the separation-individuation phase of development, Stoller (1968b) found that excessive mother-son skin-to-skin contact during the boy's earliest years inhibited the psychological separation of son from mother. Coates and Person (1985) advanced a specific hypothesis that separation anxiety—which is activated by uneven maternal availability—plays a pivotal role in the emergence of a gender identity disorder in boys. They suggested that severe separation anxiety precedes the feminine behaviour which emerges in order to restore a "fantasy tie" to the physically or emotionally absent mother. In imitating "Mommy", the boy confuses "being Mommy" with "having Mommy". Green (1987 ) also found that the father-son relationship was a prominent variable in cross-gender behaviours.
